Naruto: The Next Level
by Five Lazers At Night
Summary: Naruto isn't sure what is real anymore. Everything becomes much more complicated when you get levels for killing people, and a continue screen when you die.
1. Avatars and First Levels

Naruto looked up at the bright, glowing letters hovering before him and smiled in nostalgia. He had not seen his "scoreboard" for nine years, and even if it always came at bad timing, namely his own violent death, the sight brought out memories of his first time seeing it, and feelings of both pity and envy for the boy who looked up naïvely at the at a negative score and yelled indignantly at the shrouding darkness.

This time, the score was not negative. It was, in fact, the first time that was the case. There was little point to it, however, as nothing seemingly changed as of yet and he assumed sometime by his second session that it would take more than just a score above zero to break this curse that plagued him.

He chuckled at some of the "achievements" as he liked to call them, chief among the most amusing ones being "Defeated Neji – 50+". He had a similar achievement the first time he died, and he noted, darkly amused, that the game didn't particularly care for _how _he defeated Neji. This particular session, Neji annoyed him enough with his pre-finals personality that he never got the chance to show a _post-_finals personality.

_**Alignment – Chaotic Evil**_

Naruto looked at that particular tidbit and smirked. He _was_ fairly naughty this session. One starts to lose perspective when he knows it all boils down to nothing in the end, and really, he was simply finally learning how to be a proper shinobi. At this point he knew that the Naruto that died for the first time in the Valley of the End at the hands of his best friend would have never survived the challenges that awaited him.

Giving the achievements another look-over, looking for any hints of what he should do next time, he gave the mental command and the words faded, the yellow mist reforming into a massive prompt, asking him if he wanted to continue. For the second time he paused, feeling the weight of this decision, before choosing the suddenly not entirely obvious answer, and creating a new game. No matter how much he searched, he had never found a save spot. He hoped that didn't mean that fighting the Akatsuki, Orochimaru and all the other crap thrown his way counted as just the beginning of the obnoxious game.

* * *

The avatar selection room was just as creepy at the first time he saw it. No matter how jaded you became, seeing a giant hall of unmoving statues of yourself wearing weird costumes (shinobi clothing was usually ridiculous) was generally disturbing.

He stepped down the massive staircase that led down to the hall, leaving the overhanging balcony. This time, the room looked like the massive ballroom someone like Gato had built to stroke his ego. Admittedly, it was quite nice, and the warm colors soothed his growing headache. It was always unpleasant dying and instantly coming back to life.

He moved past Standard Naruto without giving him a second glance. He loved himself, really, but sometimes he couldn't hate anything more. He snickered as he looked at Avenger Naruto, glowering at him through unkempt hair that fell over his eyes. He unlocked this avatar after seeing Sasuke awkwardly cut Sakura's jugular in his second playhtrough. He still wasn't sure if the bastard Uchiha purposefully made such a bad cut, but having Sakura gurgling blood and dying in his arms had left him with an impression of the Uchiha.

In any case, Avenger Naruto was a fairly useless avatar. It granted him an earlier starting age and some decent starting stats, but other than that it merely guaranteed that someone he truly cared about, even if he acted as the most bastardly callous shit in the world, would die. And it guaranteed the circumstances would have him seeking revenge, regardless of his meta-knowledge.

Sometimes the way the game would manipulate the world to suit his avatar scared the fuck out him. Other times it just gave him a good opportunity to abuse it.

Haruno Naruto caught his eye as he scoured for new avatars. He nearly choked on his spit laughing. The fluff said the Haruno family only adopted, him but apparently this Naruto inherited his hair from his mother's side of the family. Still, the chakra scalpels adorning his hands were relatively impressive. It simply didn't fit his playing style though. The low chakra capacity and extremely high control would make combat confusing. While he would be skilled and fight as if he truly was Haruno Naruto, the dissonance between his avatar personality and meta personality would be overbearing, and would probably lead to a premature death in a serious fight. Besides, the of being related to Sakura caused a chill to run through his body and he hurriedly moved on.

His eyes lingered over Kyuubi Naruto for a moment, an admiring sigh leaving his lips before brushing past it. While the thought of being an immortal nine tailed demon that could destroy all his enemies left him salivating, the prerequisite was somewhat steep.

**Prerequisites:**

**- Kill the Kyuubi when not sealed by the Shiki Fuujin, singlehandedly.**

The notion was so preposterous Naruto almost completely gave up on the idea. If he could ever defeat the Kyuubi as a shinobi, he would have no need of that Avatar anyway. What could challenge him? Besides, he didn't know how to let the Kyuubi out without killing himself anyway.

Seeing the avatar he was looking for, Naruto approached it with an unhealthy grin. It was perfect. Observing him calmly, Uchiha Naruto stared back with unblinking Sharingan eyes.

* * *

The young, dark-skinned man pissed his pants a moment before Naruto plunged an elongated kunai between his ribs, penetrating the heart. His eyes rolled back as he fell to his knees, before his last breath left him and he crashed to the ground.

"You really didn't deserve such a dramatic death," Naruto said, as he spitefully stepped over the bandit's face. If he held little remorse for people he once would have given his life for, these bandits might as well have been cockroaches to be stepped on with sadistic glee. He chuckled when even the weight of his small, eight year old body proved enough to cave in the man's nose, making a rather disgusting sound. The sound of a squashed from his right and Naruto let loose a single shuriken that lodged in another bandit's throat, leaving him a bloody mess on the ground. A quick look around confirmed he killed all of them, and he allowed himself to relax as he approached the largest tent in the slipshod encampment. The scent of excretions and blood was already growing strong enough to annoy him, and he wanted to finish this quest already.

He moved aside the fabrics hiding the tent's interior and entered calmly.

"One move and she dies, nin," the towering man said, holding a vicious curved knife to a teenager's throat. The girl looked terrified, and justly, as the giant man's hand was shaking and he managed to give her a nasty cut already. Naruto was mildly pissed off. He had only started this session a week ago, and he spent that week mostly familiarizing himself with the avatar and recalling the best way to sneak out of the village. His speed was still terrible and he wasn't sure about the efficacy of his ninja skills. Nevertheless, he didn't have much time to ponder the best way to take the man out before he managed to cut the girl's throat in his terror.

A quick kawarimi had him looking at the girl's wide eyes from under the bandit chief's chin, and a quick spin had him stabbing a kunai into his gut and cutting his femoral artery. The man would die a quick and painful death. He grunted at the chakra loss. Not "formally" knowing the technique made it cost exponentially more chakra. Anything stronger than the basic three and maybe simple elemental jutsu when he was much stronger would empty his reserves completely. He ignored the sobbing girl for a second as he opened a chest in the far left corner of the tent. He grabbed all the ryo notes and the jutsu scroll inside, letting the jutsu scroll disappear the moment he touched it. He didn't need to waste inventory space on it and it was teleported to his current house immediately.

He grabbed the curved knife from the man's twitching body and stuck it in his satchel, knowing it would fit inside regardless of the real bag's size. He tried not to think overmuch about the games idiosyncrasies.

"Lift you head," Naruto said, approaching the girl. She obediently looked up at him from the ground, looking frightened. "Relax, I'm the glorious savior in shining armor," he said, before grabbing a bandage from his satchel and stepping forward cautiously. Seeing she wasn't going to freak out, he expertly wrapped up her cut. He felt awkward when she smiled brightly at him, and hurried out of the tent, hearing her following him.

"Thank you," she said from behind him, her voice still hoarse from sobbing.

"Sure," he said, and started back at the nearby village.

* * *

Naruto entered the busy inn, and immediately set upon the man tending the bar, whose eyes nearly burst out his sockets at seeing him, or perhaps at seeing the girl trailing his footsteps. The man rushed from behind the counter and engulfed Naruto's charge faster than Naruto could say a word. Naruto stepped aside and gave them their moment. He ignored the curious looks from the others in the bar, as they were people of absolutely no consequence to him. He only needed the bartender to confirm that this was his daughter and he could leave this village in time to return to Konoha before anyone thinks to look for him.

The man finally let go of his blissful daughter and sent her to clean herself up. He turned back to face Naruto, a solemn look on his face, and bowed as deeply as his aging body allowed. Had he bowed any further, he would have probably fallen over.

"My sincerest thanks, ninja-sama. You have given back to me the light of my life." Naruto returned the gesture with a nod and the man straightened.

"The mission is complete to your satisfaction?" The man gave Naruto a startled look.

"Of course," he said, and Naruto grinned as he felt a blaze of warmth engulf his body. At last.

"Good," he said, ignoring the way he unsettled the man with his grin. "I'll be off then." Naruto bypassed the man and made his way to leave the inn.

"Your reward!" The innkeeper shouted, silencing all commotion in the inn. "I have to pay you back somehow," the man pleaded. Naruto raised an eyebrow and waited. The man rushed behind the counter again the rummaged through some drawers, before pulling out a sealed scroll.

"A ninja passed by here some time ago, and forgot this here. It is the only thing I can offer that might be of value to you," he said.

"This would be more than sufficient," Naruto said, grabbing the scroll and sending it home. The scroll's disappearance was ignored by everyone, only serving to remind Naruto that all he had done now, saving the man's daughter, killing a nest of bandits – was meaningless.

Naruto ignored the man's second bout of thanks and bows and fled the inn.

* * *

Naruto returned to Konoha with little fanfare. He was still living alone and ignored by most, as his Uchiha heritage was apparently unknown. Carefully hinting the Sandaime resulted in nothing more than frustration, so either he was using the full brunt of his ninja skills to hide his lying from an eight year old, or he truly didn't know that he was Uchiha.

He guessed that his mother was not Uzumaki Kushina in this session, because there was still little doubt he was the son of the Yondaime. It was also evident in his name being Sato Naruto. While his features were sharper and his face was more aristocratic than cherubic, he still had the blonde hair and blue eyes of the Yondaime. The blue eye worried him at first, as no Uchiha he ever heard of who had the Sharingan and an eye color other than black, but he trusted in the game and in the avatar image on this one. While the game did lack in information at times - most of the time actually - it never gave patently false information, and having the avatar activate the Sharingan when looked at was as close as it came to declaring something fact.

"Character Menu," he said, and his world became darkness, broken only by bright yellow letters where a bare wall once stood.

**Level 1**

**Experience – 543 / 450**

**Level Up!**

"Level up."

**You have gained five attribute points. You have gained three skill points.**

**"**Attributes."

**Strength – 3**

**Speed – 5**

**Chakra Capacity – 3 + 10 (Jinchuuriki feat)**

**Chakra Control – 3**

**Intelligence – 5**

**Charisma – 5**

"Speed plus 3. Intelligence plus 2. Skills." He was surprised. The Jinchuuriki feat gave him 20 extra points in Standard Naruto.

**Skill Trees:**

**Sharingan**

**Ninjutsu**

**Taijutsu**

**Genjutsu**

**Jinchurikki**

**Tools**

"Sharingan." Besides that one, he knew the other skills trees relatively well. They might have changed a bit with the new avatar, but a brand new skill tree was always exciting.

**First Tier:**

**Sharingan (0 / 3)**

**Improved Copy Ninjutsu (0 / 2)**

**Improved Copy Taijutsu (0 / 2)**

**Improved Ocular Genjutsu ( 0 / 3)**

Naruto smirked. He knew for sure that he will remember nothing he copied with the Sharingan the next session, but he was fine with that. This session had a single purpose, and it was not to get stronger or more knowledgeable in the next session.

He invested two points in the Sharingan, and a point in One with the Beast (0 / 2), which allowed him to access Kyuubi's chakra without being angered or begging Kyuubi to help him. It did not help him maintain control though. That was another, less critical skill, for later levels if he needed it.

"Finished," he muttered, and returned to the game world. He got up and walked over to a large closet at the other side of his living room. He took out the jutsu scroll he liberated from the bandit camp and the "mysterious" scroll from the innkeeper. It was weird to get a scroll from such a low-level quest, but it was probably just a D-rank jutsu scroll.

He set them down on the desk and sat down to read them. The jutsu scroll contained a D-rank genjutsu called Distorted Visage, which made the target's vision blurry and inaccurate. He had never heard of it and probably for good reason, as it was incredibly obvious and easily broken by anyone with a decent grasp of genjutsu. He was surprised however, to see that the description said it could be used as an ocular genjutsu. That meant he could use it without handseals, which might make it a useful distraction. If he remembered correctly, it was also more difficult to break ocular genjutsu, meaning the shitty D-rank genjutsu might become a very low C-rank if he maximized its potential. He carefully read every word in the scroll, and immediately upon finishing his eyes brightened for an instant.

He opened the second scroll, not expecting much, and began to read through it. By the time he finished it, his face was blank as he contemplated the new possibilities. The scroll could be summarized as such – any holder of this scroll may enter freely the village of Kusagakure. He also knew by the chill breeze that had no way of entering his completely shut off apartment that he had just started a new quest. It was definitely a big one too, not a simple find and escort like the one he did to get his second level. There was no guarantee it would be a leveled quest either, and he might find himself knee-deep in shit in the middle of Kusagakure with a horde of Jounin after his eight year old ass. He chuckled at how wrong that sounded or a second before sobering.

No, he decided. He'd postpone that quest until at least level five. He barely even knew how to fight ninja with his avatar yet, having only tested out a level one fight against bandits until now. No, the big quest could wait. He had some other plans, anyhow.

The Hokage had enrolled him to the academy, and tomorrow was the first day of a new semester, meaning the end of a two-week break. It also meant Graduation Exams for the upperclassmen. He had every intention of getting into them, and passing. Unfortunately, while Uchiha Naruto, or Sato Naruto, was not as lazy and mostly incompetent as Standard Naruto, he didn't know any of the Academy Three at the beginning of the session, which was actually kind of obvious. While he isn't hated like Standard Naruto (there _is_ such a thing as bad publicity, and painting the Hokage Mountain really didn't help his case the first time around) he isn't exactly fawned over by the instructors. He did not set out to improve too much by himself, and he wasn't pushed to use his talent. It was all irrelevant though – Uchiha Naruto, whatever he was before Naruto started a new game, was dead, gone and buried. He probably never existed. What matters in the end, is that Naruto needed to get his hands on three E-rank jutsu scrolls.

Something that was really easy to do. Getting them is generally the first thing you do in the game, if played by the strict "storyline". Standard Naruto gets them from Iruka after the Mizuki Incident, though it takes time for him to get the Chakra Control prerequisites for the standard Bunshin. Uchiha Naruto is probably meant to get it soon anyway. It was the way the game worked – all avatars began at different ages, but at equal skill levels. By the time he is twelve, Uchiha Naruto will be stronger than Standard Naruto, but now they would have a fair fight.

* * *

Naruto activated his Sharingan for the first time as he surveyed the Academy grounds. Activating the Sharingan felt like having a painter draw highlights on everything important on your eyeball. Despite the darkness, he had little trouble seeing everything around him, even if there was a distinct lack of detail.

There was a single guard hiding next to the entrance door, under the shadow of a tree conveniently placed in front of the street lamp. He mused that even with the Academy Three getting past him would have been much easier. In any case, he was lax in his guard and was sitting down leaning against the wall instead of standing. With the way he rested his head, Naruto had a perfect dead space to sneak through. Only the sound of his footsteps proved troublesome, but Sato's disposition for subtlety and Naruto's experience had him inside the structure within a minute, the guard none the wiser.

He had done this little retrieval already, but the placing of items like jutsu scrolls was often randomized, in a limited fashion. While he knew for certain they would be inside the building, he didn't know exactly _where_. He turned off the Sharingan to preserve his chakra, and flinched at the major difference. It seemed that using it even once was enough to start missing it. Could that be one of reasons most people he knew with dojutsu were at least slightly insane? Deciding to postpone the question, he began his search of the building, and within twenty minutes was standing before Iruka's desk with the scrolls laid out neatly on it.

He took Henge and tried to send it to his home inventory, but it stayed put. He nearly growled by held himself in check. The game must have made his little infiltration a quest, and the scrolls quest items. That meant carrying them, and not keeping them if a lucky chunin caught him, since they were probably considered the quest rewards. Then he smiled, realizing that more quests means more experience. The risk was more than worth it.

He was halfway out the window when he heard the rustling of clothing and halfway through the courtyard a moment later. He heard the muttered curse even as he sprinted as hard as his body allowed him, Sharingan blazing to keep him from tripping in the darkness. A whistling behind him had him rolling as the shuriken cut through the air where his head was, and he finished the roll with a jump that took him through a tangle of bushes. He cursed himself for not knowing wall climbing as he rushed to a known gap in the wall, and only barely made it before a kunai passed through along with him. He ignored the sudden pain of the cut on his forearm as he made use of every bit of knowledge he had of Konoha's neighborhood to evade his pursuer.

Ten minutes later he was breathing harshly in his apartment, more due to stress than lack of stamina. He glanced at the healing cut and before tossing out the scrolls from his satchel, laying them on his desk. A warm breeze informed him that he finished a quest, and he grunted his approval.

He had been lucky, he knew. While he may have underestimated the guard, it was not by much. He should be sitting shamefaced in front of the Hokage now, not gloating over his new scrolls.

One shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth though, so he stopped thinking about it and instead started reading his new scrolls.

* * *

"I wish to take the graduation exam."

"No."

Well, he didn't think it'd be that simple anyway.

"Could you please explain why? I believe myself more than qualified to pass it." The administrator of the academy peered over his glasses at Naruto, visibly unsettled. Naruto guessed mature eight year olds brought up memories of a certain infamous Uchiha. He wondered at the man's reaction if he flared his Sharingan.

"Even if you passed the graduation exam, there is more than that to becoming a genin, and the teaching staff attempts to graduate only those it believes are completely prepared." His reasoning was sound, of course. The graduation exam was a formality. The teachers held back those whom they didn't think could pass the jounin test.

"I understand," Naruto said, attempting to sound as mature and reasonable as possible, and mostly succeeding. "However, I feel that I have learned all that I can from the academy. And that continuing here would only result in stagnation. Is there no way for me to advance early?" He had to be careful not to insult the man's institution. Saying he didn't learn anything in the academy would sound petulant, childish and most importantly, insulting. The administrator took a long hard look at Naruto's stony eyes before nodding.

"It is the role of the academy to produce competent genin, capable of engaging in C-rank missions after a familiarization period with their Jounin-sensei and their team. You would have to prove yourself to be just that."

"I will accept what examination you see fit," Naruto said.

"I will warn you though, if you fail this examination, I will not allow you to take the graduation exam again. You will have to withdraw from the academy. Is that acceptable to you? Is that worth skimming off a few years from school? Perhaps it would be best if you gave yourself at least another year to count yourself ready." Naruto allowed himself to grin. The administrator pulled off Ibiki's little test from the Chunin Exams better than the man himself. He had not doubt if he chose to wait a year he would not be given the opportunity again. In any case, the trick wouldn't have worked even on Standard Naruto when he was eight. Determination and sheer guts were something that survived through every damn session, and was probably the only reason he chose to continue after every time he died.

"I won't disappoint you, Shiburi-sensei," Naruto said, replacing is grin with a determined look.

"Make sure you do not," he answered, and that was that.

* * *

The written part of the exam was annoying. He knew that he knew the answers to some questions, but Sato Naruto did not. At times like this he felt the full brunt of his loss of true self and became nauseous. At the least, having invested in Intelligence, he knew that he passed the written exam. Some of the questions had appeared at the Chunin Exams anyway, and he was no Haruno Naruto.

He was pretty shocked when the Sandaime came to watch the fighting part. He hadn't met the old Hokage yet and didn't know how close he was with him in this world. The man gave him a subdued smile and stood to the side as the administrator and Mizuki approached him, both careful not to show their backs to the Hokage, a sign of disrespect.

"You will have to fight Mizuki with your full capabilities. I suggest that you do not hold back." The administrator went to stand besides the Hokage as Mizuki approached. We both bowed our heads, though Mizuki's bow seemed forced. Naruto wondered if he overcame his hate in this world, and whether he was still a traitor.

"Begin!" The Hokage declared, and a kunai was shooting at Mizuki's left side the moment he finished. Having limited his maneuverability, Naruto charged at his full speed, successfully surprising Mizuki and scoring a short jab to his midsection. Naruto strafed to the right to avoid a knee to the face and adjusted his left foot forward, trying to get leverage for a roundhouse kick. Mizuki noticed and simply pushed him out of position with his full weight, nearly sending him flying as his stance wasn't solid yet. Naruto didn't have time to think before he jumped over low kick, and found a fist coming straight at his face. With no way to move his position in the air he took the brunt of the punch to his forearms, and was once again pushed away. Maybe he should have invested in strength instead of intelligence. He stopped pondering his attributes in time to avoid a hail of shuriken by jumping back, hoping to make some room between himself and the chunin. His hands snapped some quick handseals and he grabbed hold Mizuki's mind with the Distorted Visage. Mizuki broke it nearly instantaneously, but it proved enough of a distraction as sharp pain in Mizuki's nether regions alerted him to the boy in his personal space. A sharp jab to the kidney nearly debilitated him, but he managed to make some room with a wild hand sweep that would have crushed Naruto's small head if it hit. Naruto didn't give him too much time though, and Mizuki had to draw a kunai to stall for some time as Naruto charged back in to Taijutsu range. Naruto was about to draw his own when Mizuki suddenly jabbed at his face faster than he ever had in the spar. He had held back significantly, Naruto realized, and did the only thing he could in his situation.

He suddenly had time to wonder at the spectator's reaction to his eyes when the kunai began to move almost sluggishly in his direction. He misdirected Mizuki's blow at the wrist before he sent a sharp knife-hand to his diaphragm. He spotted Mizuki's knee rising even at the beginning of its movement and he was standing on it even as he raised it aiming for his face. Amused at his own move, he smiled as Mizuki delivered him straight to his face with the momentum for an uppercut. If the fight had been more serious, Naruto would have aimed for the throat, but he hit the chin instead, hoping Mizuki won't bite off his tongue. It might shed some bad light on him, which would be bothersome.

Mizuki stumbled back, most likely hurting like hell, and Naruto decided that if he was going to beat him it would be now. It took all the speed he could muster to cut off Mizuki's left hamstring before he came to his senses, but it won him the fight. Mizuki's unprofessional scream was both amusing and satisfying, but Naruto this time kept the smile from his face. It wouldn't do for the Hokage to think he was sadistic. Naruto didn't take his eyes off Mizuki when the Hokage called off the match. A medic-nin came to Mizuki's side even as the Hokage appeared at Naruto's own.

"Report to my office tomorrow at eight, Naruto-kun, there are some things we must discuss," he said, and Naruto realized their relationship in this world wasn't as close-knit as Standard Naruto's.

"Yes, Hokage-sama."

"You have managed to hide the nature of your eyes for some time Naruto-kun," he added, "I ask that you continue to do so at least until tomorrow morning. I assure you everyone who observed this spar will do so as well."

"Of course, Hokage-sama," Naruto said, because he really didn't have much to add. He didn't need anyone other than the Hokage to be aware of his skills anyway, because all promotions and assignments went through him.

"Good luck then, Naruto-kun. I am sure you will make a proud shinobi of Konoha," and with that he disappeared in a sunshin. Naruto was shaken out of his daze by the administrator's footsteps. Mizuki had already been taken away by the medic and the two of them stood alone in the academy courtyard.

"It seems you have not overestimated yourself," he said, and Naruto nodded. Even if he wasn't forced to use the Sharingan and lost to Mizuki, he had shown enough to have proven he was a competent genin at the least. "I have reviewed your written exam and found it satisfactory. Report to the academy on Monday for the graduation exam." He returned to the academly promptly, leaving Naruto alone in the courtyard, contemplative.

He would need to become chunin as fast as possible. C-ranks gave decent XP, but they mostly rewarded money and the time to experience ratio was awful. It took him a day to rescue the girl from the bandits, and that mission would give more experience than the average C-rank which could take up to a month. Only a special C-rank like the Wave mission would be worth his time, but those weren't even guaranteed. No, he needed to become chunin fast, and get stronger faster. Starting so early was an opportunity he was definitely not going to squander.

* * *

**A/N**

**So yeah, this is my first attempt at fanfiction, which means anyone who reads this will likely have the opportunity to watch me progress as a writer, from the glorious rank of Paints-With-Shit-On-Back-of-Napkins to Sakura-Mpreg-Aficionado. I foresee a grand future for this fic, a grand future indeed.**

**Any and all constructive criticism will be appreciated, non-constructive criticism will break my heart and would slowly push me to writing more Sakura mpreg stories. You have been warned.**


	2. Originality is not Quality

**Level 2**

**Experience – 1200 / 1050**

**Level up!**

"Level up," Naruto said, stretching across the faint sofa that was the only object in the darkness, acting more like a cat than any giant fox jinchuuriki ever should. The fight with Mizuki went very well, beyond his expectation. If the fight had been fair, he would have lost to Mizuki, who was superior to him in all things but his meta-experience, ignoring the Sharingan. Still, the chunin lost because he held back and reacted badly to Naruto's ace. True shinobi battles were quick and decided by little moments that changed the tempo of the battle, tipping the favor between the constantly one-upping opponents. Mizuki was at least a C-rank chunin, and his statistics were higher.

But not for long.

**You have gained three attribute points. You have gained one skill point.**

"Attributes," he muttered. Odd levels sucked, barely any improvement. Still, he wasn't going to complain that he leveled up so soon. Graduating always gave a nice lump of XP, and actually beating Mizuki even more. He had no doubt that if he lost, the Sandaime wouldn't have given him the scrolls he was going to read as soon as he finished leveling. Those had Bonus Reward written all over them.

** Strength – 3**

**Speed – 8**

**Chakra Capacity – 3 + 10 (Jinchuuriki feat)**

**Chakra Control – 3**

**Intelligence – 7**

**Charisma – 5**

"Chakra Control plus two, Speed plus one," he said. Good Taijutsu made up for lack of strength every time. Strength was the least useful attribute by far. Anything high strength does chakra techniques can do better. Tsunade was the living embodiment of the rule. Gai needs to open the gates to do damage Tsunade does subconsciously. Strength was good only for higher stamina and durability, but when fighting S-rank nin, you either avoided the blow or you died. Besides, he had the Jinchuuriki skill tree if he wanted to go for durability.

"Skills. Taijutsu."

**Bursting Fist (0 / 3) **

**Blazing Fist (0 / 3) **

**Viper Bite (0 / 1) **

"Viper Bite." It was the perfect complement to his Taijutsu, a skill that increased the accuracy of sudden attacks coming from close to the body. Unlike Blazing Fist, that made all of your attacks just plain faster in addition to your Speed attribute, Viper Bite did nothing but increase the effectiveness of specific Taijutsu styles. It, and Eye of the Dragon, the second tier skill that required it, both made his Taijutsu extremely effective. What's the point of flailing away at your resilient opponent like Lee and Gai at amazing speeds, when a sharp, penetrating jab in the right spot can liquefy a liver, and an efficient stroke can push a man's nose into his brain? Naruto at times wondered if Gai was simply too soft to teach Lee the true power of Taijutsu, or if the Taijutsu master of Konoha was simply a devout believer of "the stronger the better."

He returned to the game world with a grunt and opened one of the scrolls he had lying around near the couch. The Sandaime had given him three scrolls in their morning talk, telling his Uchiha blood entitled him to at lest a bit of their legacy. Itachi slaughtered the clan less than a year ago and he was the unofficial second to last Uchia. So far, they looked promising, as the scroll he was reading now was for the Great Fireball technique, a powerful C-rank, and the perquisites were ridiculously low. No wonder Sasuke knew it in their first genin exam. Then again, it wasn't a game then… or was it? Naruto cut off that line of thought like one would a rapist bandit and let it in rot with the Kyuubi in the crevices of his mind. He had better things to think about.

Being a C-rank, it took him two hours to read the technique with his Intelligence bonus. He had time for another C-rank jutsu before he should start resting for tomorrow. If his jounin-sensei intended to test on his first day, Naruto would not disappoint.

The second scroll was an Uchiha genealogy tree. While he was slightly disappointed it wasn't another jutsu, he was smart enough by now to berate himself for acting like a jutsu-starved idiot and enjoyed looking at a bit of his avatar's history. He started at the bottom, looking for children born near Kyuubi's sealing. He finally found what he was looking for, and choked on his spit. It was too perfect.

Uchiha Mikoto, on the day of Kyuubi's attack, had a child that died the same day. Uchiha Sasuke was born ten months after the passing of Uchiha Ryuki. If what he thought was true… his path to power seemed much clearer.

* * *

He sat at the center of the class, presenting his back with no fear to those behind him and bestowing a small and elegant smile at those below him. First impressions were a bitch, but you got better at them when you made them so many times. Not that he ever met any of the people in this year's batch of idiots. Each of them seemed more incompetent than the last, without any of the Rookie Nine's redeeming qualities, such as bloodlines and truly powerful personalities.

He drew several curious looks from his young colleagues, but he paid those no mind. He already knew that he had little to gain from allying himself with anyone in this age group, and thus gave up on the group as a whole. Let them mutter and fester in their jealousy, they are nothing more than water breaking upon the cliff face, and they are a shallow tide at best.

The teacher entered the classroom, quieting the class immediately, and Naruto would have snorted if his current avatar was the type to do so. If they had quieted because they were truly obedient little ninja, he would have respected them, even if he wouldn't have understood them. But that wasn't the case. They were all simply afraid of the impotent chunin before them, quieting even though none truly wished to. The Rookie Nine, for all their insubordinate, reckless and incompetent behavior, would have ignored the chunin wholeheartedly.

He wondered at odd way nostalgia made him fondly reminisce of people he grew to despise before he focused back on the present. Missing his assignment would be embarrassing.

"Sato Naruto," he said at last, and Naruto felt the full brunt of the class' attention. The situation felt absurd as every set of eyes locked on his figure, whether subtly or in some ridiculously obvious fashion. "You are assigned to active genin team seventeen, which has recently lost a member. Your sensei is Yakumo-san, and –" at this point he reread his official looking paper and chuckled, "If you think you deserve to be on his team, you can find them your damn self." Naruto nodded, ignoring the chuckles and outright laughter from some idiot Yamanaka, and stepped out of the classroom. There was no point to hearing the rest of the assignments.

* * *

Yakumo Suijin and Yakumo Genji were the only two active jounin of the Yakumo clan. Two favors owed to special jounin Mitarashi Anko revealed that Suijin is member of a special corps that analyzes enemy jutsu, and that he really shouldn't know that being only a genin but what the hell did it matter anyway. Genji became jounin two years ago and was given a genin team after a year of service. Apparently it isn't well-known what happened to genin cell, but a boy genin died in some colossal information failure during a C-rank.

Anko didn't know where Genji's team usually meets, but the twenty-fourth year old genin who was in charge of assigning training grounds did, and was very thankful when Naruto agreed to make sure no one messes with his desk while he went off to deal with the man hitting on his civilian girlfriend, a man who happened to be an academy student Naruto paid fifty ryo. The kid had some class he had to admit, to hit it off with a girl fourteen years his senior, but maybe it had something to do with the nearly Adonis like features he chose to Henge into.

In any case, a subtle look over the incompetent genin's files yielded the training ground assigned to team seventeen, under the command of Yakumo Genji. He could have avoided owing Anko, he realized, but then again owing Anko usually ended favorably in his case.

The academy student properly chased off, leaving a disturbed civilian girl looking suspiciously at her boyfriend. Naruto agreed to chat sometime with the genin and hurried to the training ground before his jounin-sensei decided to toss him.

* * *

Naruto hated awkward situations, and this one could be presented in place of a definition for the word awkward. He was looking at two genin, a boy and a girl, whose sparring he had interrupted, and their jounin-sensei who stood behind them, giving them occasionally fond and regretful glances that were way too obvious and made Naruto uncomfortable. The group looked tight-knit, and their expressions practically shouted "Who are you and why do you think you can intrude on our emotional bonding time?"

He bowed, exactly the proper amount, and straightened back to a rigid yet inoffensive stance.

He hoped these guys were the "let's get through this together" type and not the "woe is us, let us commit suicide by enemy shinobi" type.

"My name is Sato Naruto," Naruto said, emphasizing his first name. He wasn't powerful enough to give up a known last name without being impolite yet, but he still despised the common surname he got along with this avatar. "Are you team seventeen?" Perhaps speaking to the team would distance him from them less than if he spoke like a ninja reporting to a new commanding officer.

"Yeah," the boy said, brushing some of his long red hair behind his head. Naruto couldn't recall a clan with red hair in Konoha except for maybe a few in the Akamichi clan, but the kid wasn't fat enough. He decided then and there that he would abuse the hell out of that outrageously long hair in every spar he'll have with the kid, until he'll cut it off. That his jounin-sensei allowed it supported Naruto's belief they lost a team member due to incompetence and not a justifiable mishap.

Naruto nodded. "I was made genin recently, and was assigned to this team," he said simply. He berated himself for using passive voice, but then no one is perfect. The girl wrinkled her freckled nose as if Naruto just walked up to her and shat on her foot.

"They sent a rookie to replace Juichi?" Naruto withheld remarking that being a genin for year does not make her much more than a rookie. The jounin-sensei patted her head, not removing his eyes from Naruto for a second.

"There, there, Kara-chan," he said, in the most annoyingly awful Kakashi imitation Naruto has ever heard. If Kakashi managed to sound sarcastic when he treated his genin like babies, this guy sounded like a pedophile, and his girlish figure, dress, features, and pretty much everything did not help the matter any. "I'm sure Naruto-kun was not sent to us without reason. Trust in your superiors to have made the right decision."

Naruto didn't even know where to being his internal scathing monologue and so just nodded. "I am sure you'll find me sufficiently competent."

"Of course, of course," annoying jounin-sensei said, and Naruto restrained himself for the first time in this session from killing an ally. If he surprised him with the Sharingan and a well-timed ocular Distorted Visage, he might be able to pull it off, he thought, before doing the mental equivalent of dunking himself in cold water. "Why don't you familiarize yourself with your new teammates while I go take care of some errands? I'll be back in less than an hour." Naruto found himself staring into the accusing glares of two kids who should really know better.

He suddenly had a much more important reason to become chunin fast than getting better missions.

* * *

It took decimating both of his teammates in spars before they looked at him with competitive jealous loathing instead of contempt and loathing, which while objectively wasn't that much of an improvement, made it easier to stop contemplating how to kill his fellow genin in the most sadistic "accidents" possible.

The team was taking a "break" from C-ranks after his predecessor's death, which meant he spent two weeks doing terrible D-ranks, driving him mad. Not with boredom, but with frustration at wasted time. He started the game four years earlier than usual, enough time to get some serious firepower, and he spent on inefficient low-level quests that would have him gaining his fourth level sometime four months from now. He felt like an idiot and he _hated_ that feeling.

Having a team was bothersome to the extreme, and Naruto realized he may have made a major mistake. Maybe doing the Standard Naruto shtick for four years, sneaking off to gain XP when "skipping class", would have been a lot more effective? Thinking about it, he realized it really had potential. He knew, of course, why he didn't do it. Why it didn't even cross his mind at first. He didn't think of it because Uchiha Naruto despised the idea. Uchiha Naruto wanted to show off his skills, to live up to his legacy as an Uchiha while showing the villagers what he can really do. Naruto tempered the idiotic persona as best he could, but sometimes things slipped through. This time, the avatar won a big fight over the meta-persona.

He grunted as he lifted another wood beam and dragged it into the warehouse from the cart. He'll be lucky to receive one percent of the experience he needed to level from this mission. What Naruto needed was a good bunch of grunts to kill and a decent big fight at the end. Maybe some bandit camp led by a C-rank missing nin. That would take him at least halfway to level four. Instead, he was carrying wood, listening to pedo-Kakashi cheering them on from the sidelines, exemplifying the phrase "sarcasm is the lowest form of wit."

"You can do it, Naruto," Yakumo Genji said from the sidelines, and Naruto groaned.

* * *

The bandit camp was built as a set of widening rings of tents, with guards creating a careful perimeter and an obvious decoy tent in the middle. Naruto had already determined the real leader was in a tent somewhere in the second innermost ring, one which most of the bandits carefully avoided approaching. This he determined despite the whispering that it _was _in fact the centermost tent. His avatar's intelligence was still a bit too low to understand deception at this level.

The whole place rank of missing-nin influence, meaning he got exactly what he wanted. He knew that also meant something will go very wrong if he attacked the camp. The camp consisted of close to a hundred bandits, which meant he'll be using Taijutsu for most of them. Sticking a kunai in someone meant taking it out, which took a bit too much time when surrounded by men with bows and spears. He really missed the Tajuu Kage Bunshin at times like this.

"Genjutsu – Spirit Image," he muttered while forming the handseals, creating the D-rank technique that the Sandaime gave him for defeating Mizuki. The form of a ghost-like woman materialized in the far left of them camp, between the third last and second last rings, attracting at least twenty men to her luscious figure. They stayed a few steps away, wary of the supernatural ghost, but they were too base to ignore her.

It was enough. Five kunai wrapped with explosive notes created a perimeter of death that took down a third of the missing nin's forces in a shower of blood and gore. Before they landed, Naruto was already darting to other side of them camp, tossing a shuriken at a guard's throat and jumping over a crude fence. A bandit was about to yell when he spotted him, but found it difficult to do so when his throat became a mass of squashed flesh.

A blurred invisible knife hand liquefied another bandit's kidney, causing blood to fly out his mouth instead of the expletives he intended to say.

Another rushed at Naruto wielding a spear, which was suddenly a stick which was suddenly wielded by no one as its previous owner lay dead on the ground with half a spear jutting out of his chest. Naruto jumped over the man and landed in a crouch, ducking under a bandit attempting to tackle him. He just frowned at the idiot before ignoring him. Lying on the ground, he was actually positioned in a way that made it annoying to kill him. A group of ten bandits charged his left, making his life much easier as a swift set of handseals ended in a crescendo of fire. That was the first time he used the Great Fireball in this session, and he was happy he got to kill with it the first time, instead of just using it as a distraction.

A kawarimi left a log perforated with arrows in his stead, and a punch to the temple left a dead archer not far behind.

He became whirlwind of death as he tore through the camp, crushing bones at their softest points and punching his hands where hands are not meant to go, namely between ribs and often inside of faces or backs or important organs. He taxed his attributes to the limit in trying to keep up with his memories of far more intense fights, where he was not even seen as he paved roads of corpses with no visible injuries using nothing but his Taijutsu.

His count brought him to eighty and all movement stopped when he realized he had no more available targets. The bandits ceased rushing at him, and complete silence served as the only eulogy any of the dead filth surrounding him would ever get.

The silence was broken by a war cry from his right, and a slap that sounded very much like a facepalm. Naruto smiled as he sidestepped the man's massive cleaver and gave him a massive open palmed strike to the heart, causing a heart attack and dropping the man to the ground. Naruto made sure to focus all his weight on the man as he carefully stepped over his windpipe.

"So you killed a bunch of nobodies kid, don't go thinkin' you can take down a real ninja," the missin nin said as he stepped out from behind a produce cart, his face a mangled mess of scars and his throat protected by a slashed Iwa headband. Naruto took note to watch out for Earth ninjutsu but did not bother to answer, because talking would not serve any purpose at the moment. The death of his subordinates angered the man enough that further taunting might trigger his shinobi training and calm him down.

Naruto activated his Sharingan mid sprint and placed himself besides the man expert jab a moment after he began it. His attempted knife hand to the kidney was blocked awkwardly but effectively and a wide blow from a thick arm had him rolling backwards before it pulverized his small body. The giant fireball crashed against a thick wall of earth and dust rose up to mask everything but the sound of clashing kunai. Naruto dodged the feint and blocked the real strike, leaving one of his arms incapable of movement and hurting from the strength of the blow. His second arm came up with a kunai to the missing-nin's heart while his Sharingan spun madly, casting an ocular Distorted Visage that was never intended to hold. The Iwa-shinobi didn't fall for it, and a sharp spike jutted from the ground while he jumped backwards, dispelling the pathetic Genjutsu midair. Naruto was too distracted with the spike to take advantage of the man being in the air, and they stalemated.

Naruto held his arm, grimacing in obvious pain, while the missing-nin glared over a broken nose and a busted lip. Naruto landed some hits, but his opponent was good enough to evade most of their strength. He dearly wished for some points in Eye of the Dragon.

A beautiful nymph of ghostly vapors appeared at the edge of the Iwa-nin's vision, a desperate gambit, as Naruto charged. He gave up on kunai, hoping to score a deadly Taijutsu hit before the other man could respond, but the distraction failed, and he was ready. Naruto's knife-hand was caught, and the older man grinned viciously as his kunai came down to cut out Naruto's throat. The smile disappeared when Naruto's injured arm shot up and hit his heart too fast for either to see it, Naruto seeing only a blur even with the Sharingan. There was great power in desperation. The released grip on his arm allowed him to duck under the weakened blow, though the Iwa-nin manged a final cut to the face before Naruto crushed his skull. The Iwa-nin died instantaneously, and a blaze of warmth healed some of Naruto's injuries. Whoever the man was, he was worth enough experience to give Naruto his fourth level even before the quest was completed.

He looked up sharply when he heard the familiar sound of weapons being unsheathed. Twenty men surrounded him, each wielding a katana in hand, expressions ranging between furious, calm and terrified. He was brutally reminded that he only eliminated eighty bandits before the big fight. And this was apparently the best the bandit camp had to offer, by the modicum of discipline they showed.

He glanced at his unmoving right arm before grunting. He'll just have to show them that having chakra _always_ makes the difference.

* * *

By the time he was back in Konoha most of his injuries had healed, but he needed at least a good night's sleep before he could say he was at a hundred percent. There were benefits to being a jinchuuriki, and sometimes they were worth all the cons.

As far as his teammates were concerned, he was spending his time home voiding his bowels from either direction due to a nasty virus. It took only another week of D-ranks before he couldn't help it anymore and snuck out of Konoha to do some quests. He managed to get two quests just a bit above his level, meaning extra XP, and together with three weeks of D-ranks they got him his fourth level.

It was still too slow.

The Sharingan allowed him to fight opponents that would have killed him otherwise, like the missing-nin, which meant he could level up faster than usual, but he wasn't taking advantage of the situation. Fortunately, the next chunin exam was taking place next month, and Yakumo seemed intent on nominating them, even if he grimaced every time he mentioned it. It was obvious the guy was terrified another of his genin might die, but he knew the kids would never forgive him if he didn't nominate them.

They weren't good enough, Naruo knew, but he was going to drag them through the team segment and leave them in the dust later on. He was also going to squeeze the exams for every drop of XP they had to offer.

The sun was rising outside and he wanted nothing more than to collapse on his bed, but he needed to shower and change because sleeping while covered in blood and filth was a bad habit to develop. He was halfway through his shower when someone knocked on his door. He ignored his growing headache and opened the door clad only in a wet towel.

"Sato-san," said his female teammate, Kara. She eyed him uncomfortably, probably more due to his glare than his eight year old physique.

"Hatoshi-san, how can I help you?" His side was acting up and he was resisting the urge to slam the door in her face.

"Yakumo-sensei wanted to know if you felt good enough for a C-rank," she said, and suddenly Naruto felt very glad he didn't ignore the door.

"When is this C-rank?"

"He said to be in the big gate five if you think you can," she mumbled through her teeth. Naruto nodded.

"I feel well enough," he said. "Please inform him I'll be there. Thank you for visiting, Hatoshi-san." She nodded, but didn't leave his doorstep. "Anything else?"

"You don't have to be so cold, you know," she said, her voice being both shy and indignant in a way that actually made her kind of cute for a second.

"Your reception hasn't exactly been warm and welcoming either, you know," Naruto parroted her. She frowned, her eyes going out of focus before a polite cough caught her attention.

"You came at a bad time," she excused. "We just lost Juichi, and… it was hard for everyone. He was Chiro's best friend and my… and Yakum-sensei barely talked at all after the mission. You just came at a really bad time."

"Of course," Naruto said, not really caring. "I don't expect you to forget all about Juichi-san just because I joined the team. I try my best not to intrude on your grief, and I hope that I could eventually be a real part of the team like Juichi was," you kids playing Ninja. Even the sensei was ridiculously unprofessional when it came to the death of his student. There was always an undercurrent of animosity when he spoke with the man, and he hadn't allowed Naruto to spar with his students since Naruto beat them the first time.

The girl bowed, rising with a smile. "Maybe that isn't too far ahead, né?" She said, and Naruto saw the potential.

"Hopefully not," he said, smiling, and bid her goodbye. He grinned savagely as he called forth the character screen. Kara was a nice girl, he realized. Why, she could even become his best friend.

* * *

**You have gained two attribute points. You have gained one feat.**

"Attributes, Charisma plus one, Chakra Control plus one. Feat."

There were many feats. Feats were special "properties" he got in level four and fourteen. He hadn't reached a high enough level to get a third feat yet, so he didn't know when the gave him another. Some feats he unlocked in previous sessions, some he needed to unlock in the current session, and some just had a level perquisite. The easiest way to think of them was as improvements to his avatar. While his avatar usually hampered him, some feats actually gave him abilities beyond his meta-knowledge.

So far he was building a Taijutsu character, hoping to supplement it with high points in the Sharingan skill tree. It served him well against bandits and chunin level ninja so far, but would it be enough against the like Uchiha Itachi and Hoshikage Kisame? He didn't think Orochimaru would fall to his style of Taijutsu, but his Sharingan made up for not investing in Ninjutsu skills and feats, hopefully.

Flashy Ninjutsu just weren't his style anyway. They were useful as distractions or against lots of low-level opponents, but he found them less than useless when facing competent ninja. It took less effort to break a man's guard than to maneuver him into an elemental jutsu.

"Dominant," he said, picking a feat at last. The feat would be his ace against enemies with defenses that his Taijutsu or raw Ninjutsu can't penetrate. He didn't like the feat too much, because it was very standalone, while other feats supplemented large swaths of his fighting skills, but in this case it was the right choice. He grinned. He couldn't help but wonder how his Sharingan would look with Kyuubi's chakra flowing through his veins.

* * *

The C-rank was dull, long, and a horrid waste of time. It was just the sort of mission he was supposed to do at level three or four, and a great example of why one should always find a way to avoid doing what he was supposed to do. It was not a _complete_ waste of time though. The week they spent the in the client's village doing nothing gave Naruto ample opportunities to develop his relationship with Kara. It was easier than he thought it would be. While he couldn't seduce her due to their relative ages, all he really had to do was pay her attention and listen to her gossip. She hid it well, but she was starved for companionship, the lost of Juichi making her team feel awkward around each other and her ninja friends too busy to hang out with her much.

He did his best to think fondly of her, allowing a bit more of Uchiha Naruto enter the fore as his own avatar clambered for some affection. Naruto couldn't care less about the girl's idea of a conversation, but with Uchiha Naruto influencing him he found that he could bear being in her presence, and he sought her out for less than pragmatic reasons several times during the mission.

It was both terrifying and satisfying to the gamer. His plan was moving along, but it was extremely risky giving ground to his avatar the way he did

"Sensei," Chiro said, his tone making it obvious what he was going to ask. They were having a team meeting in their training ground. "Is it true the Chunin Exams are starting soon?"

"How did you guess?" Naruto asked. "Was it the foreign shinobi running around the village, the stands being built for the festival? Or maybe it was because sensei told us a month ago?" Kara giggled while Chiro reddened in anger and embarrassment. Naruto berated himself for pointlessly aggravating the kid, but then he would have no use for him a week from now and it seemed to amuse Kara.

"Yes, it's true, Chiro-kun," the man said. His tone suggested he was about to frustrate them into begging him to elaborate. Naruto would sooner crush the man's spine.

"Are you going to nominate us, sensei?" Kara asked. Naruto didn't know whether to be upset at her for giving so fast or to be proud at her pragmatism. Their sensei seemed to ponder this, rubbing his chin in thought, tempting Naruto to check how far up his skull he could push the man's chin before it shattered.

"Yes," he said, "I think I might."

Unlike Naruto's teammates, his sensei wasn't too busy cheering to notice Naruto's malicious smile.


	3. Saw That Coming

Kara's smile was growing on him, Naruto mused, as the girl stepped into his apartment the morning of the chunin exams. They had grown closer in their only shared C-rank, and the girl frequented his apartment more and more in the days approaching the exams. She crashed on his sofa as if she owned it and stretched languidly, showing off some mid-riff that created a great dissonance in his mind. Uchiha Naruto was an eight year old, and Naruto was a guy who by now came to terms with being turned on by fourteen year olds for a period of his life.

"You should go out more," she said, lying fully on the couch. She played with her hair while staring at the ceiling fan, a worthy investment of D-rank ryo rewards. "I only ever see you in missions or stuck in this dump."

"The village is dull and its people are duller. There's nothing worth doing wandering some park that I can't do in the privacy of my home." Naruto tossed some eggs on a pan, making fried eggs. Not the healthiest breakfast but nutrition had little effect in the game world.

"That is the lamest, nerdiest excuse I ever heard," she said, showing her civilian upbringing. Shinobi didn't recognize "nerds". There were "recluse geniuses", yes, but those weren't looked down upon.

"And you're just the coolest, most popular girl on the block, hanging out with an eight year old all the time." He sat by the frying pan and stared at the girl's figure, knowing he was too far for her to know he was staring.

"You're staring, pervert."

"I haven't even gone through puberty yet, Kara." She threw a pillow at his head, which he threw back at her face with a small Daitoppa. He got the jutsu scroll as a reward for killing the Iwa missing –nin.

"That was uncalled for, and the most pointless use of chakra ever, Naruto," she said, glaring while hugging the pillow.

"You mean pointlessest," he corrected. She sputtered.

"I hate you, you immature, too mature bastard."

"I love you too, Kara-chan," he said, instantly regretting it. She smirked at him, moving the pillow away from covering her budding chest. A careless arm went up to brush away some hair from her face, moving her shirt up as it went. Lifting one of her legs had the unfortunate result of also lifting up a bit of her skirt, revealing mesh pants that hinted at her thighs.

Kara was not a beautiful girl. She had average looks, but she was a kunoichi as well, and it showed in her tight figure.

"Do you really mean that, Naruto-kun?" she asked, and he nearly groaned as his body failed to respond along with his mind. She was torturing him, but not in the way she was thinking.

"You're teasing an eight year old, you sick shotacon," he reminded her, and chuckled at the horrified look on her face.

"Holy shit, I was." She sounded like she really didn't know what she was doing. "Naruto…" she started, and hesitated. He never got to hear the rest of the sentence when his alarm clock started ringing.

"We have to be in the academy in twenty minutes," he said, glad at the interruption. No good would come of _that _emotional quagmire. It was obvious she was trying to replace Juichi with Naruto, and that his mature personality wasn't helping. Still, he wasn't going to start acting like an eight year old ought to, and they _were _getting closer, which was his original intention.

"I'm all set," she said, and he nodded. He tossed the burnt eggs in the trash and opened the window to let out the smoke. He completely forgot about his breakfast when Kara started her little routine. "You're gonna make another one?" she asked.

"No, I'll be fine." He went to his house inventory and carefully selected what to put in his satchel. He couldn't be sure it will be the same exam he usually did four years from now, and he wasn't going to assume too much when he knew the game would do its best to fuck up his day.

Big quests like the Chunin Exams are usually leveled. If he took the exams as a jounin-level shinobi, he could be certain that at least a few teams will be way too powerful to be genin as well, and that something horrid will occur in the finals. When he played as Standard Naruto once, it was the classic Suna-Sound invasion. In his last playthrough, Gaara was a competent ninja with a grudge against the world, instead of lunatic child with jinchuuriki powers. Standard Naruto would have been squashed by the somewhat sane demon-container before he got out a single word about the power of friendship.

This time, he held the advantage. The Sharingan's greatest strength in the game was in being a powerful perk that made him stronger than his level indicated. If he had attempted to storm a bandit camp led by a missing nin with Standard Naruto at level three, he would have been reintroduced to the continue screen prematurely. That meant that unless the game wised up, the Exam would be tough, but not as tough as the game intended it to be.

Realizing what he was thinking, he cursed loudly. Even in the real world thinking like that invited unmitigated disasters.

"Since when do you curse like that?" Kara's amused voice interrupted his self-destructive thinking.

"Since you barged into my life and took over my furniture."

"Your cold heart could never appreciate this couch the way it was meant to," she said, fondling the couch, shooting it fond looks. Naruto just stared at her.

"You weren't this weird two months ago," he said. She wrinkled her nose.

"You were a retarded super-ninja ice scuplture two months ago."

"Touché."

* * *

"There will be two stages to the exam," the chunin intoned. His perfect monotone would have had Itachi simmering in envy. "The second will be revealed to those of you of pass the first. The first stage of the exam is a retrieval and survival scenario," at this a chunin standing on stage pointed at three balls colored red, blue and green sanding on a pedestal. Each team will be given one. You mission is to retrieve three balls of different colors in a three day time limit. You can only pass if all living teammates report with the balls. Killing is allowed, but frowned upon. Please follow me," he said, and they followed. They didn't get to meet their competitors this time; the chunin caught them as they approached the academy and led them aside immediately.

Naruto considered tracking down all the teams in the exam for maximum XP, but keeping his team alive would prove troublesome, especially if Chiro started causing problems. He couldn't care less if a stray kunai cut out Chiro's throat, but Kara… shit, Kara was his friend. And that was the plan all along, wasn't it?

His sigh sounded more like a grunt as he came to a decision. He would play it safe, keep Kira alive, and try to avoid situations where Chiro might get killed, plentiful as they might be.

Standard Naruto was an idiot. Having friends sucked.

* * *

Haru's sensei told her Konoha shinobi were soft-hearted fools that would crumble at the slightest display of force, and the Konoha team they encountered proved his words. They aimed to disable while Haru aimed to kill, hesitated when they had perfect hits when Haru took advantage of the slightest advantage, and fought more like samurai than ninja. They paid the price in blood and their bodies were lying next to their stacks of food and candy. The fat idiot that was munching on chips when they ambushed them was the first to go down at Haru's orders, simply out of spite for his stupidity.

Haru doubted her sensei for the first time when she watched the blonde kid with the Konoha headband dismantle their taijutsu specialist in under two seconds, breaking his guard and caving in his face before they fully comprehended they were under attack. She was certain her sensei was oh so terribly wrong when the kid moved faster than anyone she ever saw except for her sensei and shoved a kunai under her boyfriend's chin before he finished the handseals for the Mizurappa.

It came to her in a rush. She was going to die.

She decided that she wasn't going down alone.

She scratched an explosive note in her sidebag even as she bumrushed the child murderer that killed her team. Her eyes locked with his a moment before everything turned black.

* * *

"Naruto-kun!" He heard the scream through a fog of pain and chased after with zeal. If he didn't wake up soon he wouldn't hear the end of it. "Chiro! We have to hide him somewhere," Kara continued, her voice harried.

"Get the ball," he wheezed out. Feeling was coming back to him, but he allowed his teammates to carry him a bit until his demon tenant finished healing him. He head the rustling of clothing and was suddenly picked up roughly in a bridal carry. The hard chest he was pressed into confirmed it was Chiro who held him. He was somewhat disappointed.

It took them ten minutes to find a decent hiding spot and Chiro dropped a bit too roughly on the ground. His fall kicked off some dirt and he started coughing. A meaty thwack alerted him to Kara's reaction.

"You idiot, this isn't the time for your macho games," she berated him.

"Why are you always taking his side, anyway?"

"I'm not! But you're acting like an idiot-"

"Hiding becomes a moot point when every genin in forest can hear your bickering," Naruto said, slowly sitting up. His injuries weren't severe, the worst being a concussion. He smelt the smoke of the explosive notes early enough that his Earth Wall took most of the damage, and he suffered more from the concussive blast. If he hadn't copied the jutsu not too long ago, he could be dead.

The two kids shut up instantly and glared at him. Kara no doubt glared to mask her worry and Chiro because he was a jealous bitch.

"I'll handle it myself," she mocked him, posturing. "You have nothing to worry about Kara, these genin are nothing to me!"

"I have a concussion and their entire team is dead. Spare me."

"You're such an idiot," she grumbled, frustrated. "Why aren't you just letting us help you?"

"That team was too powerful," he said. His headache went away already and his other injuries were superficial, scratches and bruises. The blast wasn't powerful enough to cause internal damage past Naruto's defensive jutsu. "They were all good enough to make chunin," and they were real killers, shinobi, he didn't say. The girl's desperate gambit proved it.

"So are we!" Kara said, indignant. Naruto muttered under his breath and Kara threw a water canteen at his face. "Drink." He did his best not to seem too thankful as he greedily emptied it.

"Did you get their ball?" Naruto asked.

"Yeah, they had a red one," Chiro answered, looking at his teammates oddly. Naruto and Kara acted as they always did during missions, making their bickering sound like it came out of nowhere.

"Which means we have three," Naruto said, pleased. To be honest, he hated the Forest of Death and wanted out of it.

He knew the forest well by now, and took them in a direct path to the watchtower, hoping to avoid dramatic encounters. They were tree-jumping, at least, which meant they'll make it there in two hours if they were lucky.

He snorted at the thought.

* * *

Sand. Fucking sand. His mind kicked into high gear the moment he spotted the pile of sand beneath them. His Sharingan was spinning madly as he turned sharply on the next branch, cracking the birch when he tackled Kara before she realized what was happening. Holding her tight, he pushed every drop of chakra his Chakra Control allowed him to his legs and burst forward, thankful once again that the Sharingan prevented tunnel vision. He kept running even when he heard the childish voice behind him mutter "Desert Coffin", and rushed faster when Kara's eyes looked horrified and he heard Chiro's guttural scream.

A slither of sand nearly grabbed his leg but an explosive kunai thrown over his shoulder sent it leaping back to its master's defense. A wind jutsu nearly toppled him over but he jumped over the sphere of compressed air. He used the Sharingan to memorize the scene in front of him perfectly so he wouldn't trip, before turning his head and catching an auburn haired child's eyes. The ocular Distorted Visage took hold instantly, causing a dome of sand to form abruptly around the child. The absolute defense wouldn't allow the risk of not seeing a potential attack, even if the Genjutsu was easily removed.

The distraction proved enough to stall the Sand team and Naruto was beyond their reach by the time Gaara broke the illusion, not willing to slow down for a second.

* * *

The shock had worn off by the time they made it to the tower. Kara was sobbing, her face buried in his chest, while the chunin verified the colored balls. He gave them a pitying look which Naruto ignored before telling them they passed the first stage, and that they had to wait in the tower until the day after tomorrow. The man left as soon as possible, leaving the team of two alone.

"Kara-chan…" he hadn't comforted a crying girl in a long time.

"He died so fast," she muttered. He barely heard her, her face still pressed to his chest. "It was like it didn't matter, you know."

"It's always like that, Kara-chan. We aren't heroes in some fairytale. Death isn't glorious, it just happens and it sucks and all you can do is move on." He thought about the bandit that had the gall to die too dramatically, one of his first kills in this session.

"Shit, shit, shit," was all she could say, because she knew he was right because both her teammates died meaninglessly, one in a pointless mission and one in a tournament within walking distance of home.

"We should find our room," Naruto suggested, but she ignored him. A soft hand cupped his chin and he nearly gasped when her eyes grew intense and caught his. Her head grew closer until her breath softly caressed his face.

"You aren't going to die on me too, right Naruto-kun?" she asked so pleadingly that he had no other way to answer her.

"Of course not Kara-chan," he said, and said no more as she caught his lips with her own. His eyes widened, and she giggled at his expression when she broke the kiss.

"Even if what I just did was totally wrong, it was kind of worth the expression on your face," she said, and Naruto didn't have a witty remark this time.

* * *

Naruto sat in their assigned room, his face blank as he stared at Kara's sleeping form. The situation was a total clusterfuck. He cared too much, got too involved with the girl. She made him act more like Uchiha Naruto every day, and his affection for her had gone so out of control that he seriously considered, even if only for a moment, to tell her to run and stall Gaara to give her a better chance to live. That wasn't the bad part – his plan demanded that she stay alive for now. No, what truly sucked was that he was considering that knowing that facing Gaara and his teammates alone could very likely result in his death.

He couldn't distance her though – that would make all the work he had done so far meaningless. He knew from the start that he was taking a huge risk and he still went for it, and he wasn't going to back out now, just like he didn't when the academy administrator gave him the false ultimatum.

No, he thought, looking at the fidgeting girl as she struggled with her nightmares, he would risk it, because just like any proper Uchiha, he knew that the road to power was fraught with misery.

* * *

"The next battle will be between Sato Naruto and –" the jounin proctor paused, arching an eyebrow. "Tsukimi."

Naruto chose to take the steps while his opponent jumped off the rails and landed in a crouch. The kunoichi was Gaara's second team member, Temari being the one who sent the Wind jutsu at him in the forest. He guessed that Kankuro wasn't enough of a prodigy to appear in the exams like his siblings.

"Aren't you a cute little squirt," the girl said, sealing her fate. Her smile was coy and her face was bland, and Naruto knew she wasn't going to be a threat. Indeed, Kankuro was the weakest link in the Suna team before, and this girl was probably hanger-on as well.

Naruto smiled shyly, allowing himself to look down demurely as the proctor hadn't called the match yet. "Treat me well, né?" He chuckled sheepishly and girl smiled kindly. Her smile was fake and she was planning to destroy him, but then she was also going to underestimate him, which was more than enough for Naruto.

"Hajime."

He was in her guard before the smile left her face and she barely deflected his killing blow. She coughed blood from the powerful jab to her stomach but had enough resilience to strike back. He leaned back, enjoying the advantages of being short when a senbon whizzed over his head. A poison specialist, then. Having lost tempo, he jumped back to avoid a lucky strike. He was proven right when purple smoke exploded around the girl who probably developed an immunity to it. He countered her wind jutsu with a superior Daitoppa when she attempted to blow the smoke his way, and the smoke cleared just in time for him to break her surprised expression with his knee. The sound of her nose breaking was followed with the splattering of blood when Naruto cut her jugular. He chose to retreat from the body lest any other poisons get the chance to surprise him.

"Winner, Uzumaki Naruto," the jounin said, eying the genin appreciatively.

It was an easy win. While poison specialists can be tricky bastards capable of taking opponents beyond their caliber, the girl was really just a genin-level kunoichi and too low on the food chain to be a threat. He smiled blandly at the two other Konoha teams that passed. He pitied them when he saw their distraught looks. One of them was missing a member as well.

Kara smiled and congratulated him but he ignored her, choosing to focus on the Sand team instead. Gaara didn't seem to care about his teammate's violent death but Temari's expression promised vengeance.

He smiled, further infuriating her. If she attacked him out of the exams, he might be able to keep that fan of hers.

"The next battle will be between Sabaku no Temari and Hatoshi Kara."

His smile disappeared just as Temari's became a full-blown grin. He admitted to himself he actually kind of saw this particular twist coming. He whispered as soon as Kara was out of hearing range.

"Sensei, what would happen if a fight were to be interrupted by a third genin?" The question was, of course, purely hypothetical.

"The genin who interrupted the fight would be disqualified and severely reprimanded, and the proctor will decide the outcome of the match." The jounin sounded serious for a change. Naruto wondered if the man consigned himself to losing his entire original team already, or if he would interrupt the fight before Kara died.

"Hajime."

Temari gave her spill about the three levels of fan. She looked incredibly vulnerable during her speech but he spotted that most of the openings were bait. Some weren't however – the girl was still an overconfident eleven year old genin.

Kara used a basic Genjutsu to offset her position, and threw shuriken at her opponent. Predictably, Temari deflected them with a wind jutsu. Temari frowned and broke the Genjutsu with an excessive "Kai!" Most likely after noticing Kara'clothes weren't ruffled by the wind.

Kara tossed another pair of kunai at the wind user which were again sent back at her. She dodged under them and this time sent three, one of which she wrapped with an explosive tag. She triggered it at the end of Temari's swing, when the jutsu left her overextended. The kunai was still between the two when it exploded, but Kara stuck her feet with chakra to the ground and was in position to charge through the smoke at the off-balance Temari. Naruto smirked at her plan. She timed Temari's jutsu while the arrogant girl wasted her chakra deflecting projectiles she should have just dodged. He didn't miss her copying his tactic from the earlier fight.

The smoke was thin and cleared quickly, showing Kara standing over an unconscious Temari, though her victory did not come cheap. A thick trail of blood leaked from her temple. Temari must have gotten a good hit her massive fan, which looked absolutely ridiculous when wielded by an eleven year old.

"Winner, Hatoshi Kara." The girl smiled brightly at Naruto before dropping into a feint. Naruto let the jounin proctor catch her and watched as the medic-nin took her away.

"It seems you underestimated your teammate, Naruto-kun," Yakumo said, though his voice was more subdued than usual.

"I am pleasantly surprised. She took advantage of her opponent's arrogance very well." The other Konoha jounin in attendance nodded, while Sarutobi gave an enigmatic smile.

* * *

Gaara's opponent died in shower of blood.

* * *

Three tomoe swirled spun lazily in the mirror, calming the raging mind of the blonde haired shinobi. Moonlight was beautiful when viewed with the Sharingan, he mused. He had leveled up once again, if only barely, after defeating a genin who challenged him in the tower after the preliminaries. The idiot served a higher purpose and gave Naruto the last bit of XP he needed.

Odd levels sucked, and in gaining his fifth Naruto got two attribute points and a single skill point. He increased his strength by one and his speed by one. He was loath to invest in strength but if it stayed as low as it was he might be unable to break even the soft spots of tougher shinobi.

The skill point he invested in the Sharingan skill, granting him the third and last tomoe. What was fast was now slow and what was slow became still when he observed it with his bloodline, and only one perquisite remained to accessing second tier Sharingan skills.

He had been given a month to train, during which he would gain his sixth level. Not because he would be given the freedom to go out and complete quests, but because the exams were leveled and he _always _gained a level in the month break.

He felt a great sense of déjà-vu when his sensei told him he was going to focus on training Kara for the finals when they both visited her in the hospital. This time he felt glad instead of jilted. A month of training with Yakumo would be torture.

Instead he was sitting in his apartment, indulging his narcissism while thinking of his next step. Maybe training with Yakumo would have been easier.

The Naruto sitting in front of the mirror did not react when the kunai phased through his head. Instead, he merely shimmered for a bit before a hand burst from the back of his skull and grabbed the attacker's arm. The real Naruto, who had hidden inside of a Bunshin slightly larger than himself, pulled the hand towards himself while striking at the attacker's face. His fist was deflected and his opponent made an attempt at the hand grabbing him before ocne again being forced to defend his face. Deciding that he was going to kill the man and that he could allow himself to use the Sharingan, Naruto cast an ocular version of the same Genjutsu Kara used in the preliminaries. The attacker blocked a punch that went through his hand and only good reflexes had him moving his head in time. He wasn't quick enough and while Naruto missed he still broke the man's cheek bone, making a mess of his face. A desperate tug broke Naruto's hold and the man jumped back while throwing a familiar windmill shuriken. Naruto grinned as he jumped over it, expecting the cloned shuriken in its shadow. He'll have to remember thanking Mizuki for showing him the Shadow Shuriken Clone jutsu just now, right after Naruto killed him.

He was tempted to use an elemental jutsu but he didn't fancy destroying his apartment, so he charged back into Taijutsu range instead. Mizuki was fast but his Taijutsu was weak and too reactive, and Naruto overwhelmed with an efficient offensive that devastated his tempo and left him a broken, dead mess on the ground.

He was getting oddly powerful, Naruto mused. At level five, he should not have defeated Mizuki, a mid-level chunin, so easily. He was distracted out of his musings by the large scroll tied to Mizuki's back. The temptation was intense but he knew that he shouldn't. The Forbidden Scroll of Sealing was truly forbidden, and getting caught reading it would be troublesome considering he didn't have a reputation this time for being an idiot. Once more he lamented not pretending to be as dumb as he was in his younger days.

Very loud footsteps alerted him to the second shinobi's approach, an experienced shinobi's way of raising a white flag. He turned off his Sharingan and barely reacted when Jiraya of the Sannin entered his apartment through the window Mizuki had broken. The legendary ninja gave the body a quick look and whistled appreciatively. Naruto wondered what truly went on behind the man's playful exterior.

"You worked him good, eh kid?" Jiraya picked up the scroll and placed it on his back after giving it a good lookover. The Toad summoning scroll was missing from his usual appearance, but overall he looked the same as he always did during the chunin exams.

"Did the idiot try killing me after he realized his inevitable fate?" Naruto wondered aloud, not caring too much for speaking formally with the powerful jounin. Jiraya wouldn't appreciate it. Jiraya chuckled.

"He was probably looking for a hostage. He knows you're close with the old man." Naruto did not know he was close with "old man", whom he'd not spoken with since his graduation exam. Perhaps they were estranged a while before the session started? Maybe the Hokage was sitting in his office all day expecting him to visit. He wasn't planning on trying to confirm that theory.

"The quality of chunin is in decline then, because he didn't seem to be aware that sticking a kunai in my skull will make me a terrible hostage."

"I'll be sure to let the old man know," Jiraya said. He tossed a wallet at Naruto who deflected it to his desk reflexively. The instinct to catch thrown objects is the first one to go for the better ninja. Jiraya snickered when he saw his reaction. "You're high-strung like a war veteran, kid. There's some ryo in that wallet, go get yourself a room in a decent hotel and the ANBU will have the apartment all cleaned up for you tomorrow morning." Recognizing the dismissal, Naruto nodded and made a quick trip around the house pushing some items into his closet. The ANBU could never actually see into his inventory, which meant he wasn't concerned about them finding ill-begotten jutsu-scrolls, strange knives and scrolls granting access to foreign villages in a genin's closet.

He left the apartment wondering what else the game was going to throw at him this month.

* * *

He bowed as was proper when given such a valuable gift and responsibility. Jiraya's ability to tolerate his whining and posturing the first time around amazed him more than the man's skills as a shinobi.

"Cut the bowing shit, kid, I know you're not the type." Naruto's smile was small but it was his most sincere in a long time. It was true that he was not the type to bow, though he learned a long time ago that concession can always be made in the name of pragmatism. Kara's image came to mind and he nearly grimaced before forcing himself not to think about it.

"You have to sign in blood, the Toad Summoner said, and Naruto nodded before biting his thumb. It healed fast but he managed to sign _Naruto_ faintly on the scroll. Naruto wasn't surprised when Jiraya didn't comment about omitting his surname. He had never even learned if Jiraya was originally the man's first or last name.

Jiraya handed him a jutsu scroll containing the A-rank summoning technique. Actually showing him the technique and teaching him how it was done would be pointless in the game world, and thus Jiraya even in his ignorance didn't bother.

It took him four hours to read the scroll, despite the fact that it was barely two printed pages long. Jiraya had insisted that Naruto won't perform the technique without his supervision, and so he was forced to draw the man away from his entertainment, much to the man's frustration. Naruto felt his pain, the girls Jiraya was ogling were incredibly attractive (how the peep always managed to find hot girls bathing in public, regardless of his whereabouts, made Naruto wonder at times if Jiraya had some sort of perverted feat.)

"How big?" Naruto asked.

"As big as you can," Jiraya answered. Naruto nodded and focused, using all of his own chakra reserves and making the best use of his Chakra Control to prevent as much waste as possible. He wanted to see which was the biggest toad he could summon without using Kyuubi's chakra.

He sped through the handseals as if it was routine and slammed his hand on the ground. A huge sealing array spread from the crash site, heralding the appearance of a massive cloud of smoke.

Naruto grinned, kneeling in exhaustion over the giant form of Gamahiro. Definitely better than a month with Yakumo.

**A/N**

**I suck at cliffhangers, blame the guy writing this story.**

**Naruto hints and prods but will he ever do the nasty deed? Will the Rookie Nine ever get some screen time? Will Sakura ever go through the inevitable unnatural physical transformation? All of your question might be answered when I'm done wasting the word count on offing people who piss Naruto off.**

**Now, for the fanservice – **

**OMAKE – What People Expect To See When They See Naruto/FemKyuubi**

**The massive fox of giant sizeness looked down at the miniscule figure glaring up defiantly. It opened its mouth to speak, toxic vapors of repugnant chakra spilling forth in waves from a mouth rotting with the evil of mankind and its voice causing severe cholesterol problems to the small woodland animals that it created in its cell solely so they could suffer severe cholesterol problems after hearing its voice.**

**"What do you want, filthy monkey-man-thing mortal-bone-sack less-good-brat?"**

**Naruto defiantly defied it by the sheer presence of his ignorance and stupidity, treating the ocean of miasma that was engulfing him as if it was those colored ball things toddlers drown in at McDonalds.**

**"I wish to know why you hounded my beautiful village that fateful night, why you brought down this calamity upon us all?" He intoned, his voice was regal and powerful, dwarfing the presence of the Gigantic Demonic Nine Tailed Fox whose mere stare caused heart attacks. That his glare looked more adorable than intimidating on his eight year old face was besides the point.**

**"I did it because insert-random-cannon-antagonist-here managed to trick me into attacking the village somehow. I really hate him and everything else now too."**

**Naruto seemed to ponder his before a waterfall of tears burst forth from his eyes, washing away the evil-vomit from the sewer floor with its disturbing essence.**

**"I forgive you! It is obvious now that you aren't to blame for the villager's tireless beatings, rapes, abusive language and for placing me with the Dursleys."**

**The Kyuubi seemed shocked, an expression so out-of-place on a demon fox that even Naruto's martyr level indifference couldn't stop him from cringing at the horrid sight. Suddenly, the fox totally turned into a hot woman girl with red hair and nine tails that looked more hot than zoophilic and a red kimono was somehow involved.**

**She had really big boobs.**

**"I don't want to take advantage of you," Naruto said the first thing that came to mind to make the hot chick do it with him. She seemed to ignore him.**

**"Your forgiveness has rekindled a flame in my frozen heart made of mortal tears, let us mate," and she did some ridiculous mating ritual and they lived ever after and forgave Konoha and made a harem with Hinata because she totally liked him since the academy and it was so obvious and oh Naruto.**

**END OF OMAKE**

**Don't worry, in the real story Kyuubi will be a brunette. **


	4. Better than Sewage

A good Taijutsu battle has rhythm. It is a dance in every way, where both participants play along in their set roles to a soundless beat, hitting and dodging and blocking in a mix of action and reaction. Victory comes in the opportune moments where the beat favors the position of one over the other, and the rhythm is broken with the crash of wild thunder.

Naruto spotted the moment – he was doing this shit long enough to be as good as any other ninja, but he wasn't fast enough to exploit it. Jiraya had no such compunctions when his turn came.

The open palm caught him in a perfect uppercut and he was sent flying backwards at the force of the blow. Jiraya didn't let up for a second, appearing at his side in time for a haymaker to the stomach that punched him into the ground and loosed bile in his tightly shut mouth. Naruto spat the bile at Jiraya's face and his Sharingan spun madly as he tried to predict where Jiraya's stomp will land. He rolled to the right direction and jumped backwards, letting loose a gout of flames that engulfed the stronger shinobi. The ashen tree stump fell in a miserable heap, only hitting the ground after Naruto had dodged an explosive kunai and retorted with Kunai Kage Bunshin.

The hail of kunai was blocked by the famous Hari Jizo, and a moving wall of hair needles was blocked by a static wall of earth that rose with little time to spare.

Naruto kicked at where his Sharingan told him Jiraya's liver would appear, but a hand was there instead and it grabbed his leg a second after he maximized the impact. His gambit failed and the pain in his joints that came with missing a powerful kick was the worse he felt throughout the battle. Jiraya twisted his leg brutally, and Naruto felt like Jiraya was tearing it out of its socket when a kindly blow to the head spared him further pain.

* * *

The splash of water on his face did not surprise him, because Jiraya had been waking him up this way for the last two weeks. With the amount of times he was getting knocked out, this was at least the fortieth time Jiraya soaked his hair.

"You're too reckless with your Taijutsu," Jiraya admonished before tossing him a grilled fish. A fire was already going, their camp the only bright spot in the moonlit forest. When you camp with someone like Jiraya of the Sannin, it doesn't matter that your camp is easily spotted.

Naruto caught the fish at the tail, knowing that this species had the strange feature of a tail that didn't heat.

"And you overestimate your Sharingan." They were camping in the woods outside Konoha, training nonstop. Naruto was barely gaining XP because sparring didn't count, but he was extremely glad. The _real _experience he was getting would help him at any level. He also caught some jutsu with his Sharingan that would be useful later on.

"I'm still not aware of its limits, I know." And he wasn't. Sometimes the Sharingan was phenomenal and sometimes he couldn't get what the fuss was all about.

"Your bloodline isn't perfect," JIraya said, pausing to toss a fish skeleton over his shoulder. It fell into the harsh river and snapped in many pieces before they were all dragged down stream, towards Earth Country. "And it's a part of your body in the end. Your eyes aren't gonna start winning your fights for you, just like arms aren't gonna start moving on their own and punch the other guy." Jiraya didn't elaborate but Naruto understood, even if his lesson did not translate perfectly into the game world. Naruto needed to learn how to use the Sharingan better, and he shouldn't have expected it to be amazing when he only put three skill points in the tree.

"Where did you learn that style anyway?" Jiraya asked, and Naruto didn't react as if Jiraya was asking a crazily difficult question.

"Animals," he said, only half lying. "I watched the coiling snake and leaping mantis, the cat landing from a two-story fall and the fox tensing when it finds its pray." His gaze lost focus as he stared at the fire and reminisced about his most difficult quest and its suitable reward, a meeting with a glorious Taijutsu master called Nuihc, who taught him the bares of his craft in a world that forgot so much it proved enough. "Man learned to use the spear and the kunai, and when man sought to use his arms and legs again he used them as if they were weapons to be wielded. When I fight I am my body as much as I am my mind and where I send my strikes the rest of my body and soul follow." They sat in silence for a moment, Naruto placing the remains of his fish at his side – he would kick it in the river later.

"You should write that shit down, kid," Jiraya finally said. "It's a cock and bull story but the readers will gobble it up."

Naruto shrugged. He didn't need Jiraya to believe him. He just needed the man to stop asking questions and keep teaching him how to kill.

* * *

Three days before the finals Jiraya told him he had some "shit to get done" and disappeared to god knows where. Naruto spent some time with Kara, who was out of the hospital by then. He indulged in letting her drag him to her favorite restaurants and hangouts, and if she cared about the looks the strange duo was getting she didn't show it.

By the time the festival the night before the finals started emptying, and the streets cleared of people and grew silent, Naruto had still not gained his sixth level. It was maddening and Naruto could not get himself to sleep. Even after the XP reward for the quest training with Jiryaya, he still needed some to get another level, but it was too late to run out and find some bandit camp to destroy and he could just start killing random chunin in the village.

He gave up with a sigh sometime near four in the morning. He was powerful enough to get the chunin rank, he was certain, and the extra level was more luxury than necessary for his survival.

He had rested his head on the pillow for exactly five minutes when he spun aside so a kunai would lodge in the mattress instead of in his head. He mule kicked the attacker off the bed and spun in a blur to a standing position on the floor, his Sharingan flaring. The attacker sent a stream of senbon in his direction which he deflected easily with his kunai, the Sharingan making the task far too easy. He was moving forward even as he deflected the projectiles, but his enemy was in movement as well and Naruto had to duck under a ball of condensed wind that shattered his nightstand. Naruto growled when another forced him backwards, denying him Taijutsu range. He gave it up and spat a fireball at the wind user, knowing he couldn't use wind to defend against it, and jumped through his own ball of fire. He hated that tactic because even with his fire affinity it hurt like hell, but it was well worth the pain when he heard a beautiful crack resonating in the bedroom, the sound of his fist breaking ribs. A second more precise attack at the disoriented attacker broke some more ribs, but this time pushed them up and through the lungs. The assassin coughed blood all over Naruto's face as a last revenge before stilling against the wall. Naruto got a good look at the man's face and chuckled. He was the bodyguard of a Daimyo he saw walking down the street yesterday - no doubt sent to secure a bet. Exhausted beyond measure, Naruto ignored a rush of blazing warmth and just went to sleep covered in the assassin's blood.

* * *

Uchiha Naruto, Level 6, watched Kara and a nameless Mist shinobi beating the shit out of each other in the arena. They were evenly matched and were both at genin level, meaning that the battle was long, dull and ultimately had the unsatisfying ending of Kara dropping from exhaustion a moment before her opponent, giving the Mist shinobi the win. The girl had depleted her chakra reserves using an earth jutsu Yakumo most likely taught her the previous month, and would have likely been forced to resign her next fight anyway. Naruto guessed that she won't be getting the chunin rank, but that her performance will get her a good set of teammates after Naruto got promoted. She will likely be fast tracked to chunin with most of the other finalists.

Yakumo dropped her off in the stands with some of the other genin from her academy year after a brief medical checkup. Naruto guessed Kara wanted to watch the rest of the fights instead of sitting alone in a hospital room.

The next round of fights was mostly lackluster, except for a single fight between a likely chunin candidate from Konoha and an obvious plant from Iwa. The Konoha genin managed to stand his ground against the clearly superior opponent through a great show of subterfuge and efficient ninjutsu usage. Ultimately he lost however, losing his life in the process before the proctor could call the match. Naruto had no doubt that a team of Iwa genin will "disappear" mysteriously near the Konoha border sometime next month in reprisal.

He did not have time to think of such things however, because the next fight was the one most of the audience had been expecting, and betting on.

The battle of two jinchuuriki prodigies, Sato Naruto versus Sabaku no Gaara.

* * *

It was total chaos. The Hokage was fighting the Kazekage and the Suna Elders where he once fought Orochimaru and the resurrected Hokages. His ANBU were denied from assisting their master by the joint efforts of Suna élite this time, instead of a massive construct of Orochimaru's genius Fuuinjutsu.

Loud explosions were heard from well beyond the stadium, sabotages being triggered throughout the village as the precursor to a massive Suna assault. Naruto recognized the sound of rumbling stones as the collapse of a part of Konoha's walls.

Naruto saw his sensei jump to stand by him from the corner of his eye, though he refused to remove his eyes from the Suna jinchuuriki. Gaara was eyeing him with a strange calm that actually served to comfort Naruto. A calm Gaara is a Gaara that doesn't turn into a towering mass of sentient sand.

"Kara is with the other genin in the north-east stands, go help them," Yakumo said, his own eyes also firmly planted on Gaara.

"We could beat him together, sensei," Naruto said, wishing the man would just go. At least Kakashi, in his lazy reckless endangerment, let his genin fight alone against unspeakable odds when they asked nicely.

"You will follow my orders, student. Let the jounin handle this one. Besides," Yakumo gave him a stern gaze which fit oddly with his smile, "I'm counting on you to protect Kara. Konoha will survive this, and you two will as well, am I understood?" Naruto nodded reluctantly, and with even further reluctance gained some respect for his jounin-sensei. The man was willing to die so Naruto and Kara could live.

Naruto sprinted north-east and wall climbed to the stands, cutting a Sand chunin's throat with his fingernails as he cleared the safety rail to the balconies. The man fell gurgling blood and two of his allies stood shocked while Naruto blew a burning inferno in their direction. They were not chunin for nothing and the ball of flames only served to give the already dead chunin an early cremation.

Naruto bent under a curved strike with a kunai and sent a Kaze no Yaiba as the overextended chunin, cutting the man's heart in twine. Seeing his second ally die the last chunin shouted incoherently and rushed Naruto, a mad gleam in his eye that told Naruto all he needed to know as he matched the man's charge with his own. He deflected the powerful but unbalanced punch and hit the man's diaphragm full force. He had a second to suffer the pain of breathing on the ground before he never had to bother breathing again.

Naruto jumped over the pile of corpses to a crowd of shocked genin who watched him with wide, unblinking eyes.

"Holy shit," a purple haired thirteen year old said when he finally approached them. Naruto ignored her, not deigning to acknowledge the Konoha genin he never met before.

"We need to get to the other side of the stadium," Naruto said, speaking to Kara. His eyes never actually focused on hers, constantly jumping to the sides in search of enemies. "This is an easily defensible position but there are too many high level shinobi here. Just the Kazekage and the Hokage could kill us all with a stray jutsu." Kara nodded, while the other genin still looked uneasy listening to an eight year old, regardless of his earlier performance.

"We should wait for our sensei," a blonde haired girl said, her clear blue pupil denoting her as a likely Yamanaka. "What if they can't find us if we leave?" A Hyuuga girl scoffed at her.

"Are you so easily terrified, Yamanaka? Once more you display what a pitiful excuse for a kunoichi you really-"

"Shut up, you white eyed bitch, just because-" Naruto shut them up with a glare.

"I don't recall speaking to you. Be silent before you attract even more attention in our direction." He looked at Kara. "Let's go." Kara looked hesitantly at the other genin, who watched their by-play, perplexed. Except for the two girls who were glaring at Naruto with all the spite they could muster. Kara looked at Naruto again before nodding and stepping forward. He just grunted his frustration at the situation and started leading her carefully across the north-eastern section, heading to the western section. He would have just taken her out of the stadium but the exits were obviously ambush hotspots.

He noticed a few of the genin took to following them as well. They were on their own, he decided. If they died no one would reasonably blame it on him and he had no wish to protect them. Kara was the only one that actually mattered in the group.

That was precisely why he tripped her in time for a kunai to whiz above her head and jumped over her with his hand mid swing, his knuckles meeting a Suna-nin in the temple, killing him instantly. He was back at her side in an instant, fending off another nin that tried taking advantage of her being down. He stabbed the distracted man in the groin with a kunai and ended his unbearable misery with stab through the throat.

He took his eyes off the corpse just in time to see another Suna-nin cut the Hyuuga girl in half through the waist with a katana. The other genin were dead, similarly cut up. The heavily muscled man's eyes locked with Naruto's for a brief moment, before his neck was broken by a massive kick. A Konoha jounin stood where the Suna nin died.

"Chisaki," the Konoha jounin muttered mournfully as he stared at the bifurcated Hyuuga. A second look revealed him to be Maito Gai, wearing loose civilian clothing. The man locked furious eyes with Naruto, and Naruto tensed in preparation. If Gai were to attack, it would be the most dangerous fight he had so far in this session. He would likely die. Gai disappeared in a blur of speed and Naruto activated his Sharingan reflexively, but he didn't appear again.

"The Sharingan…" Kara said, looking up at his eyes, not having stood up since he tripped her. "So I wasn't imagining, in the forest."

"No, you weren't," Naruto said, turning it off. He waited for her to rise before continuing to make his way down the stands. She followed.

"You really don't care do you?" She asked. Naruto looked back at her, before resuming his careful scan of his surroundings.

"Care about what?"

"About those genin that just died, about… Chiro." Naruto spotted a glint at the corner of his eye, and tensed, suspecting it was the sunlight glancing off a weapon, but it was merely the reflection in the exposed metal skeleton of a seat. The fighting was focused on other parts of the stadium and their careful progress went on interrupted.

"They are dead. I can do nothing about that. I _can_ make sure you don't join them, which means I can't stop to cry in the middle of a war zone." She chuckled.

"That's bullshit," she said, and he didn't bother objecting. "You know what's funny? I look at them and feel disgusted by the way they died, and I know how terrible it is, but I just don't feel sad. I don't feel like I care. Does that make me screwed up?" He voice was getting frantic. "Does that mean I'm as screwed up as you, Naruto?"

"It means that you're a ninja," he answered, keeping his eyes on the fighting around them.

"Then what's the point of being a ninja!" She continued, he could hear her sobbing. "If everyone you care about just dies and in the end you don't even give a shit, and when you die, no one will give a shit too!" He looked back again and saw that she had tears flowing down her red and furious expression. He also saw the tendril of sand a moment before it grabbed her, but it was already too late. Her only warning was Naruto's wildly spinning Sharingan before the sand grabbed her and pulled to the arena in amazing speeds.

Naruto was not far behind, moving fast enough that the Sharingan was necessary to prevent tunnel vision. He dodged an errant kunai and leaped over pot holes made by earth jutsu, cursing as the girl slipped further away. If he could just grab her before they reached Gaara…

He was too late. He stood facing a bloodied Gaara in the center of the arena, Kara being held tightly in the air above the Sand jinchuuriki. She was squirming but her hands were held by the sand and she had no way to release herself. Gaara was curiously injured, a gash in his forehead dripping blood on his nose and several cuts adorning his chest. He ignored them, giving Naruto a warm smile.

"Your sensei did not," he said, and Naruto was beginning to realize. "The other jounin could not," and Naruto saw the bearded son of the Hokage lying unmoving beyond the jinchuuriki. "Tell me, Sato Naruto," Gaara said, his smile widening. "Will you validate my existence?"

Naruto was moving even as the insane container finished his words, his hands forming handseals faster than he ever had before. The great fireball met an indifferent wall of sand but Naruto was already attacking from another angle, sending a sword of wind hurtling at Gaara's side. Gaara took a step back, letting it breeze by him and four tendrils of sand shot forward at Naruto, who ducked and weaved through them with the aid of his Sharingan.

He remembered his trick from the Forest of Death and cast an ocular Distorted Visage, but this time the sand continued attacking him and Gaara broke the illusion. Naruto did not miss the mist of sand that engulfed the boy as young himself. Could he be using the sand to sense incoming attacks, relying on that input so he wouldn't have to worry about Genjutsu?

He mistimed a dodge and a tendril grasped his arm. He tried cutting it but the sand reconnected instantly and engulfed the rest of his arm in a tight grip. Seeing three more tendrils hurtling at him Naruto sighed imperceptibly and used Kaze no Yaiba once again in the right, jumping back in time to dodge a sandy fist crashing on his position. He ignored Kara's high-pitched scream when she noticed his injury, and instead used a low powered Goukyakuu to cauterize the stump. It and Kaze no Yaiba were the only jutsu he could use with one-handed seals.

"So decisive, Sato Naruto," Gaara said, his voice monotone. "To give up your arm, even when faced with no other options, shows amazing force of will." Naruto just relished the small respite and spent it calming his breathing. "But you have yet to even wound me. If these jounin could harm me and yet still could not validate my existence, how could you?" His eyes glinted maliciously. Naruto knew Gaara relished he power wielded, the ability to exercise his hatred against humanity. "Perhaps I am wasting my time with you, Sato Naruto. Perhaps I should kill this girl you care for and destroy this village."

The threats which should have sounded ridiculous coming from an eight year old struck a chill in his heart. He did not care for the village, but an unexplainable urge to protect Kara surged within him and he wanted nothing more than to destroy this insane child that wished to kill the only person he cared for in _so_ _long_.

_Dominant. _The Dominant feat allows the use of 1/3 of your level of Kyuubi's tails without losing control.

_One with the Beast._ The skill makes it easier to draw out Kyuubi's chakra, especially when fueled by powerful emotions.

Naruto looked for the power within him and called it forth with all the rage in his body. He used the ace that he did not reveal even once since the beginning of the session, calling upon the power of demonic fox caged inside him. It was the ultimate hidden power, the unlimited chakra of the most powerful of the tailed beasts.

He called upon it, and it did not answer. He called upon it with the surety that his feats and skills made it possible, and nothing happened. His shock almost caused him to miss the disappointed frown on Gaara's cherubic face. He had just enough time to widen his eyes before Kara's body was squashed like a grape.

Her lifeless body fell to the ground, and Naruto's world was consumed by darkness.

* * *

He expected a dark room and a scoreboard mocking his fate. He expected a hospital room and a doctor listing his injuries, informing him of the death of his team and mocking his fate. He expected a dark and damp sewer, a blood red fox taunting him as it boiled him in corrosive chakra while mocking his fate.

He was staring up at a clear blue sky, smelling the faint aroma of roses while lying on a patch of grass. He sat up easily, noticing he had no injuries, that his arm was restored. He was sitting in the shadow of a large tree. Perfect, shiny red apples hung off drooped branches, and he noticed a few had fallen around the tree, hiding amongst the flower beds. The scene was false, he knew. There was no apple tree that looked that way, and the flowers would not be able to grow so close to it without starving when the tree took all the natural nutrients.

He stood up slowly, still unsure about his injuries, but he felt no pain. He gave the tree an inscrutable look before turning away. He had managed four steps when the voice came.

"It may be false, but does that make it any less beautiful?"

He gasped in surprise but did not turn immediately. The voice from behind him was female and adult. She spoke regally, but there was a strange undertone to her voice he couldn't describe. When he finally did turn to face here, he did not gasp, but his widened eyes spelled his surprise just the same.

The woman was beautiful. Delicate hands held glittering red apple in a soft embrace, caressing it with the tenderness of a lover. Deep green eyes examined it, shaded by a curtain pitch black hair, before turning to capture his own. She looked at his small form with a judging gaze before turning to face him, dropping the apple to the ground. Her face was imperious and accepting, inviting and utterly unreachable. She held out her hand and beckoned him forward, before turning to gaze at her tree once more.

He approached, because he knew that he would find nothing else in this place he appeared in.

"Do you know why you are here, little Sato Naruto?" She asked, not facing him. He stood there staring at her back, the height difference too obvious in their proximity. He was close enough to notice the small patterns of curving loops and waves in the fabric of her white dress.

He shook his head. He would not give away information freely in his assumptions.

"I cannot see if you are shaking you head, as I am not looking at you," she commented.

"No," Naruto said dryly, attempting to hide his embarrassment, "I don't know why you took me here." The woman sat down and leaned against the tree, straightening her dress before shooting him a penetrating gaze.

"You need not engage in wordplay," she admonished, then smirked. "Especially not such blunt trickery. Ask what you wish to know, and I will answer if I deign to. Do not presume to extract information from me as if I were an enemy or a captive." Naruto did not sit down as well.

"Where am I?"

"In your mind. Or your belly. Or in a dimension beyond either of our comprehension, where the ruling god allows our souls to manifest at his behest. To be truthful, I do not know myself." She shrugged, the movement looking strange on the superhumanly beautiful woman.

"The seal? We are in the Shiki Fuujin?" The woman nodded, then smiled. Naruto's eyes widened before he tried jumping back, but a surprisingly powerful hand grabbed him by the throat and kept him pinned. He attempted to break the hand with a powerful jab at the joint, but the woman let go before he could and shoved him, knocking him to the ground. When he stood up, she was sitting in the same position from before, her dress unruffled.

"Let's not make this unpleasant, Naruto-kun. I do not wish to harm you." She paused. "Well, most of the time I do not wish to harm you." She sounded amused.

"You admit it then? You're the Kyuubi." She nodded. Naruto had so many questions about the situation that the only he way he could summarize it was a monotone "What the fuck?"

The woman sniffed. "How crude. Are you not aware that you should watch your mouth when in the presence of a lady?" She leveled her imperious gaze on him and he felt irrationally guilty.

"I recall you calling me 'meaty sack of retarded bird droppings' in one of my sessions," he found his snark hidden somewhere among the overflowing terror and shock. "Aren't you being a bit hypocritical?"

"That _was _a good one, wasn't it?" She asked. Her voice was laced with mirth. Naruto tried taking the conversation back on track.

"Why aren't you a giant demonic nine tailed fox?" He honestly couldn't find a subtler way to phrase the gargantuan elephant in the room.

"Have you not heard the legends of Kitsune shape shifting to beautiful women, Sato Naruto-kun?"

"Bullshit," he said, frowning. "The Bijuu are masses of chakra that gained sentience. You are no more Kitsune than a Rasengan." The supposed Kyuubi gave a tittering laugh that stirred something in the annals of Naruto's mind that he didn't really understand.

"I suppose that was a bit far-fetched wasn't it? This is my favored form, one which I appeared in most of my life. I can seem like this due to the nature of this place. We appear here as we truly perceive ourselves." Naruto glanced down at his eight year old body. Was this how he perceived himself? "You are right of course that the Kyuubi cannot shape shift. It had only one large and rather unwieldy form, that of the nine tailed fox."

"You said you spent most of your life in this form, which means most of your life you were not the Kyuubi," Naruto said, his eyes narrowed in concentration. The woman smiled again and clapped slowly.

"Impressive deduction, little Uchiha. But can you reach the conclusion? I will give you this hint – I am in truth, no more the Kyuubi then you are Uchiha."

The realization stole a beat of his heart and he fell to his knees when his legs gave way. His breathing became erratic and his eyes out of focus as his lips tried forming the words. The Kyuubi who was so much more smirked maliciously.

"You…" Naruto gasped out, forcing himself out of shock. He couldn't be this vulnerable now. "You're an avatar. The Kyuubi is your avatar."

Red slitted eyes met with the swirling tomoe of the Sharingan.

"You're a player like me."

* * *

The Kyuubi rose, her eyes still the dark and familiar red of her demonic form. Naruto stepped back cautiously at her approach. He did not know if she could seriously harm him in this strange place but he would not submit to her willingly. He guessed that if the sewer was his mind, the place he was in now was the equivalent of inside the cage.

"You have nothing to fear, Naruto. I am not your enemy. In fact, I wish to help you."

"Help me? What do you have to gain from helping me?"

"I wish to save you from yourself." That struck deep.

"Thank you for your kindness, but I find I must refuse your offer," Naruto said, his tone so sarcastic he felt like he was spitting acid.

"My, my Naruto-kun, but if I won't, then who shall?" She kept approaching, but he was matching her steps in stepping backwards. "Will your precious Kara-chan save you, or perhaps Yakumo-sensei whom you've come to respect? Mayhap the gallant Jiraya will come to your rescue, with his plentiful jutsu and experience?"

Naruto's mouth dried as he realized just how much the Kyuubi knew about him. He was at a severe disadvantage.

"None of them can help you," she continued, "because none of them would wish to. Why would lovely Kara-chan wish to save you from yourself, when her closest friend is the over-protective Sato Naruto? Why would Jiraya wish to save you from yourself, when he sees in you the legacy of a father that never existed and the promise for a future that he could not build himself?"

Naruto had tripped by now, and he was crawling back from the Kyuubi as she prowled at him, her fangs enlarging and her eyes glowing in the darkness that began to spread in the beautiful garden.

"No other will save you, Uzumaki Naruto, because I am the only one who knows you exist! You have forgotten Uzumaki Naruto, you have delved so deep into the comfort of your avatar that you nearly lost yourself to a life of meaningless mediocrity!" Her hair was dancing wildly as unseen winds tore apart the ground and the trees and the flowers. She was shouting over the screaming of thunder, and darkness had by now engulfed them, masking the shower of rain that bore down on their heads.

"I am the only who would save you, because I am the only one who knows the true value, the true potential, of Uzumaki Naruto! You are no Uchiha, because what is the bloodline of a clan of mortals to your power? You are no jinchuuriki, because what is the power of a Bijuu in the face of true immortality?"

Naruto tried speaking but his mouth was parched even in the constant rain and his eyes were watering with strange emotions.

"You are the being whom I have seen spend fifty years dying to save those you value and fifty more slaughtering the same in campaigns of blood and vengeance. You are not an eight year old child seeking love and affection from pitiful mortal creations!"

It was as if a dam was released and red chakra flowed from within her in force, waves of dark miasma engulfing and searing the beautiful grasslands, sparing nothing in their ravenous hunger.

"I will give you the chakra you wished for, but I am not granting it to a Sato, or to an Uchiha. I am granting it to the man whom the pitiful creature before me has usurped. This is a test of true strength, little Uchiha. I hope dearly you will lose."

The chakra grew so plentiful that the world became a perfect shade of red, and then once more turned black.

* * *

Naruto looked at Gaara's frowning face and laughed. He laughed and laughed, and laughed even as the cocoon of sand covered him up to his neck and left him defenseless. He laughed when he saw the broken form of Hatoshi Kara, and laughed when he saw his sensei's headless corpse next to her.

He laughed because he realized he did not care. He laughed because he realized that it did not matter that he did not care. He laughed because nothing in this world he was in, not Gaara, not Hatoshi Kara and not Uchiha or Sato or whatever the fuck he was Naruto, mattered at all.

He laughed even as tears of blood ran down his face, tears born from the anguish of accepting unto himself the misery of a man who had lived war for a hundred years. He laughed at the madness of thinking he could ever escape it, and at that it took the Kyuubi to break him from his little fantasy.

He stopped laughing when it felt like his eyes were being ripped from their sockets, but he did not scream.

And like any proper Uchiha he knew in his past lives, Uzumaki Naruto decided to pay a last tribute to his avatar and shared his misery with the world.

"Amaterasu." The flames of the sun goddess, fueled by the misery of a ten decades and the chakra of the most powerful of all the Bijuu, spread in a torrent of flames, escalating in a maddened need to find a release from their eternal torment. The cursed flames that knew no rest roared their defiance as they consumed every corner of the village of Konoha, feasting on the great miseries in the ninja village. By the time they were satisfied, after seven days and nights, not even ashes were spared in its wake.

Thus did the village of Konoha crumble, taking with it even the life of one Uchiha Naruto.

**A/N**

**Holy shit, a plot. Dunno what came over me. To be clear, the story definitely doesn't end here.**

**A few comments and PMs came from people who seemed to have taken the omake parody from the previous chapter seriously. Worry not. **

**The harem will be Kyuubi with Iruka and Kakashi's ill-begotten love child, who was ejected rectally in a day even Tsunade realized she did not know everything there is to know about human anatomy. Her name is Mariko Suzuki; she likes the color blue, long walks on the beach, and she has the Rinnegan.**

**Update: Apparently this isn't clear enough. Yes, I am joking. Mariko Suzuki is not a real character. This is not a harem fic. **

**Also, I'm not sure if the ending to this chapter is actually considered a cliffhanger or not, considering how I threw the main character off a cliff and described the way his body imploded on impact with the ground.**

**I have received one unconstructive review, and as I have promised in the first chapter, the pressure has become unbearable and I find I must write this beautiful omake about acceptance and appreciation –**

**Omake – Tsunade has Big Breasts**

**Tsunade's breasts jiggled as she entered the waiting room of the hospital. They bounced merrily to a happy song that ran in Naruto's head as he watched their jaunty dance, a moment before his head was nearly caved in by his irate wife's fist to the face.**

**"I have some good news," Tsunade said, before ruining everything by continuing, "and some terrible, eldritch news from beyond mortal ken." Her face became a pallid white and the somewhat happily married couple was stupefied.**

**"Uh, the good news first," Sakura said, wanting to reinforce herself before whatever Tsunade had to tell them.**

**"Right," Tsunade said, taking out a few X-Ray pictures from a file. She handed it to the couple and watched Sakura's face as it filled with elation and understanding. Naruto's stayed blank as he stared at the black and white thingamajigs.**

**"A baby," Sakura said, and Naruto's eyes bugged out, "we're having a baby!"**

**Tsunade happily nodded, and Naruto's shock was disrupted by the massive movements of two towering peaks at the edge of his vision. His eyes snapped to memorizing their movement, and he wished dearly for the Sharingan so he could remember it forever.**

**Sakura suddenly became pale.**

**"What are the bad news, Tsunade-sama?" At this Tsunade became uncomfortable, looking at odd corners of the room and fidgeting. Naruto started fidgeting with his pants as well as Tsunade's fidgeting caused strange physical phenomenon in her upper portio- her tits.**

**"Well, a thorough physical examination led me to discover some interesting physical properties that you may not have been aware of, Sakura."**

**"Huh?" Came Naruto's eloquent response.**

**"Your uterus," Tsunade said, hesitating. Sakura interrupted her.**

**"What? Is it defective? Do I have some sort of can-"**

**"It's a penis."**

**The pair stared at Tsunade. **

**"What?" Sakura asked, her voice monotone.**

**"Your uterus. Your uterus is a penis."**

**"Is that possible? I don't think that's possible," Naruto said, his face green. He was another discovery away from retching.**

**"It isn't. I have no idea how it happened, but somehow the baby is growing in a giant penis in Sakura's body."**

**Sakura started shaking. She was just staring at the images in her hands, starting to notice some strange and familiar shapes in the X-Ray.**

**"I have a penis," she said, "I have a penis."**

**Tsunade hastened to correct her.**

**"It's not like you can have sex with it," she said. This did not bring much comfort to Sakura.**

**"The baby," Sakura suddenly said, because one should always ****_think about the children_****. "Is the baby… normal?"**

**At this Tsunade smiled, though it seemed highly forced and unpleasant.**

**"Of course, your baby is perfectly fine." Sakura smiled. "It'll be a perfectly healthy boy, with a healthy penis and an absolutely normal uterus."**

**Sakura was too busy sobbing to notice Naruto vomiting all over her clothes.**

**Tsunade just looked mournfully at the couple, and wondered what would happen if Sakura ever got an erection.**

**OMAKE END**

**At least it's not Sasuke.**


	5. Killing Random People

He woke up in darkness. His mind ached and there was phantom pain in the arm he had cut off at the shoulder with his own jutsu, but he knew that he was healthy and whole. Soon the pain would be forgotten. Then, the memories will fade. In the end, the last three months of his life will have amounted to nothing more than a list of achievements and a realization that he had, in a way, given up. When he trained for the finals, he trained so he would become chunin. He trained because he believed he deserved to be chunin, because he wanted to impress Kara, because he wanted to be free of Yakumo. He had given up. Surrendered to the avatar, become the child he desperately wanted to be.

He had forgotten, and Kyuubi had brutally reminded him in a haze of toxic chakra and grief.

He had forgotten, and he made sure not to forget again by purging from existence the child he had surrendered to, along with everything he knew. Uchiha Naruto had to die before Uzumaki Naruto could once again live.

And it was beautiful. The black flames burned him, consumed him, and in that endless torment he felt the greatest release.

This was why he stood now in the poorly lit museum, his eyes roaming over the wax figures, and knew with surety that no matter which avatar he chose, he would bend it and break it and purge it from his mind with the wrath of a mad god.

He brushed his hand over Standard Naruto's grinning face, smiling to himself before grabbing the chin and snapping off the figure's head. It felt symbolic, but in truth he did it because he felt like it. He moved on, ignoring those avatars he knew well from countless hours of careful comparison and examination.

Pupper Master Naruto gave him a blank gaze, cold blue eyes looking especially disturbing in their waxy composition. He had unlocked this one after shoving a Rasengan through Sasori's mouth, and moving through him like a drill until his Rasengan pulverized the seal containing his soul. He never chose this one and never will. Puppet Mastery was a weak art, useful perhaps in war scenarios where having cheap frontliners covered with poison proved efficient, but for S-Rank play, they were just too vulnerable. Sasori, except for maybe Hidan, was the weakest of the Akatsuki.

He kept going, passing several newly unlocked avatars he knew he had no interest in. Their stats might prove promising, but the storyline that will be foisted on him would be annoying. Why would he want to deal with being Abused Naruto or, he chuckled at this, Mute Naruto? It was with these thoughts on his mind that he stumbled across Uchiha Naruto, looking at him through dull red and black eyes. The Sharingan seemed so _dead_, he mused, on the wax doll. He brushed his hands over them, feeling the indentations of the three tomoe. He smirked, wondering what his Mangekyou must have looked like a moment before he set its power loose. The smirk disappeared like it was never there and he forcefully dragged himself away from the avatar, resisting the temptation.

It was in a way worse than those pathetic avatars from before. The Sharingan demanded misery, misery that singed your soul and ripped at your mind with the maddened zeal of a starved beast. To become powerful with the Sharingan, he would need to become exactly what he wished to avoid – attached. Emotional at the avatar's level, not the meta. Attachment was weakness. The Will of Fire that Konoha claims to have borne it through three Shinobi Wars was no more meaningful than any other religion, any other fanaticism. The strength of Konoha's "bonds" came merely from the fanaticism with which its soldiers fought to protect them. Iwa's Will of Stone had them winning the third war with their relentless determination before they were conquered by the ninja who surpassed all others, Namikaze Minato.

No, attachment bore only weaknesses and strengths that did not make up for them. He would find his force of will elsewhere, in his want to _understand_ what happened to him, what was his purpose in the seemingly pointless game. This wish would be his Fire, but this desire could never feed the endless hunger of the abyss that was the cursed eyes of the Uchihas.

This was why Uzumaki Naruto managed to walk past the Uchiha Naruto without looking back once. He had chosen an avatar already. It could be interesting, he mused. There was great potential in Genjutsu, and there were many other bloodline limits in Konoha besides the Sharingan.

Having picked his avatar with a mental command, Naruto was surprised when the world did not turn completely black. At this point he would usually simply "realize" his eyes were closed, and open them to find himself in a new world.

Instead, the selection room faded out into gray mist, which reformed into a world of black and white fog. Before him was gray forest, lit by a white sun and hiding familiar undergrowth behind ink black shadows. It was extremely characteristic of Fire Country.

To his left, sand as far as the eye could see and the shadows of a series of towers in the distance. Wind Country?

Behind him was water. He could see only stretch of ocean that was disturbed by faint spots of light in the distance. A faint tugging on his memory had him observing the picture more closely, and then his eyes widened with realization. Water Country, and in the distance, Kirigakure, the village hidden in the mist. His mind worked furiously to understand this new situation. What had changed since the last playthrough?

Ah. He smiled in realization. He had destroyed Konoha, and with it, the Hokage and Kazekage. He had killed in his past sessions the Mizukage as well, if his fogged memory did not mislead him. If this conjecture was correct, then he had just unlocked a very interesting twist to the game. He shrugged, and stepped into the murky water until he was completely submerged.

He was getting sick of Konoha anyway.

* * *

He was moving. He knew this because he could feel the shaking of the cart's wheels on the rocky road and the shrieking of its hinges. A horse neighed, the sound barely penetrating the closed space he was in, and barely heard over the cart's rumbling. He tested his hands and found that his wrists were bound behind his back. His legs were not. He risked opening his eyes for a fraction of a second, and saw nothing but darkness. Assured, he opened them again. He raised upper body in a sit up very carefully, brushing his head against the top of whatever he was held in. He applied increasing pressure with his bound wrists, lifting his upper body, and then raised his knees, entering a very low crab walk. Making as little sound as possible, he raised his left leg off the bottom and moved it forward, until it brushed another hard wall. He was in a very tight box. The cart shook powerfully and he fell with a loud bang, nearly breaking his wrist – the noise of yelling from outside masked his own strangled cry of pain. The cart was near tipping over, and he lowered his head in time to hit the side of his box with his forehead instead of his face.

"You are trespassing in the Mist's lands, Sound-nin," someone said outside. Naruto heard a few chuckles.

"You think you're some hot shit?" an arrogant voice bellowed. "You should have gotten some reinfor–" The sentence was never finished, instead culminating in a choked gurgle and two gasps. Naruto rolled his eyes at the enfolding melodrama and decided enough was enough. He folded his knees as close as he could into his chest and brought his hands backwards, to serve as counter force, and then he kicked. He kicked hard, pushing instead of focusing on impact, and the side of the box flew off. Chakra rushed to his arms and with a focused push he flew out the hole. He winced in pain as a loose nail cut deeply into his shoulder.

He analyzed the scene outside with the calm speed of an experienced shinobi. Four men, one wearing shinobi gear and a Kiri headband, the other three farmer's clothes. One of the "farmers" lying on the ground in puddle of blood, his throat cut. The two others fighting against the Kiri shinobi, neither side gaining ground. None seemed to pay attention to him. Naruto saw all this, and decided that he had nothing to do with the high level fight. He was still level one, still too weak to fight against real ninja, and fighting against the likely Kiri jounin or against the team from Sound would be disadvantageous. Thus, he decided to engage in what shinobi liked to call tactical re-positioning, more commonly known as running away.

He did not know where he was exactly, Water Country was a big damn place, and so he ran towards the nearest landmark, the sound of rushing water. It was faint but Naruto ran after it with zeal, knowing that a river would mask his scent and movement from any pursuers and would ensure he found a settlement at some point, where he could blend in.

He realized something mid-stride and almost tripped, but he managed to catch himself on low branch and resume his exhausting sprint. He had realized that there was absolutely no need to get to Kiri. He could level without the protection of a hidden village. Besides, he was beginning to remember that approaching Yagura's Kirigakure while posessing a Kekkei Genkai was a less than optimum idea.

The water's roar grew intense and Naruto spotted the precious blue water as he burst through thick foliage. He spotted a movement to his right and used the last of his remaining energy to catch the struggling fox. Holding it with his legs, Naruto removed his shirt and wrapped it around the fox, hoping to create a false scent trail. If the Sound shinobi that apparently kidnapped him survived and came after him, he would not make it any easier for them.

Naruto jumped into the water and started swimming downstream, keeping his head below water as long as possible. As the adrenaline started to fade and he stopped thinking tactically, he pondered the strange beginning. He had always woken up in the relative safety of Konoha, never in a volatile situation like this. Was this some sort of progress in the game? Perhaps he had made the right choice in choosing a different origin village, besides his other reasons. It was strange however, that he did not actually start the game in Kirigakure. Was the game going to force him to get there? Would it simply be satisfied with giving him a background in Water Country he might find out about later?

All wandering thoughts left him when the water's pressure on his back intensified. Not wanting to have his skull split on the rocks, he attempted to find a decent hold, but it proved futile and his leg slipped on a pebble, and suddenly he was flowing all too fast head first. He did not dare to rise from the river and he could not reach the earth of the bottom before he was once more swept forward. Frenzied fish flew by him and slapped his body with their tails, but he did not care for them because suddenly he was in the air and falling, falling, wind lapping at his face, and then it went black.

* * *

"You're an idiot," the familiar voice said just as he woke up. When he opened his eyes he expected to see the beautiful garden that was the Shiki Fuujin, because what he just heard was the voice of the Kyuubi. Except that he was not in a garden of any sort – he was in a decrepit room of moldy wooden floors and rotting wooden floors. Sitting on a table that seemed to have borne the toll of far too many years in the dank room, swinging her legs, was the most beautiful woman Naruto had ever seen. This did not mean it was the first time he had seen her.

"Kyuubi," he said. The woman smiled at him, a smile that did not seem very pleasant.

"Your ability to state the obvious astounds me. You must have at least five points invested in that skill tree."

"Nothing compared to your specialization in pissing me off." He frowned at his surroundings. "Are we in the seal?" The Kyuubi shook her head, getting off the table and walking over to the closed window.

"We are not in the seal. We are in the house of the man who saved you from your own stupidity." Naruto grunted and sat up in the bed, examining himself for injuries. His shirt was removed by someone and he wearing only a pair of rough leather skin shorts. Once done, he looked back at the Kyuubi, who was peering at him with a quirk of her lips.

"Do I actually have to ask?" At this she gave him a full smirk.

"A bit of your Ying chakra started getting naughty, creating a manifestation of your Id. It was a nasty and ugly little thing and it somehow managed to find its way to my seal."

"The Ido. The Kurama Kekkei Genkai." He had only heard of it in passing. He gave her a questioning look. "I suppose I don't have to worry about that particular aspect of the bloodline limit anymore?" She laughed, a wondrous sound that nearly made him shiver.

"Well, I couldn't let it tread all over my beautiful grass, dripping its foul chakra everywhere." Naruto waited patiently before rolling his eyes.

"And?"

"I ate it." Naruto stared at her for a moment before shaking his head. "And now," she continued, "I can apparently cast minor illusions on you from within the seal." She smiled prettily. "Isn't it wonderful?"

"No," Naruto said, erasing the patently fake smile off her face. "It's frankly disturbing, but then I could sense that this is a Genjutsu the moment I saw you, which means I'm not overly concerned." He was lying. He could not sense the Genjutsu at all. By the condescending smile on her face, she knew he was lying too.

"Don't worry Naruto-kun," she said. "We both share similar goals. In fact, I wish for nothing more than for you to succeed." Her beauty tempted him to believe her wholeheartedly. He ignored it as best he could.

"Why should you care about my success? It seems you're better at this game than I am," he said, trying to fish for information. "To have actually killed the Kyuubi." He stilled when her features softened and morphed into the most motherly expression he had ever seen. She approached him slowly, tenderly reaching out and caressing his cheek.

"Worry not, Naruto-kun. One day you might be half as good as I was at my worst," and the effect was ruined. He snarled and nearly spat in her face at the manipulation, but decided it was best not anger the woman who could make him walk off a cliff with undetectable Genjutsu. He steeled his eyes. Not for long, he decided. He would get good enough at Genjutsu to detect those illusions; his avatar was predisposed to do so anyway.

He left the bed and approached a mirror Kyuubi was admiring. It was an old thing, embossed with scratches and filth. Kyuubi's reflection greeted him before he brushed past her and stood before the mirror. This time he couldn't suppress the shiver when the soft fabric of Kyuubi's dress whispered over his bare skin. He examined himself in the mirror, comparing his height with the Kyuubi's smirking form behind him.

He guessed himself to be thirteen year old. His hair was brown and his eyes a darker shade of blue; his face was longer than his original form, but not thin like when he was Uchiha. He was about to turn around when a pair of arms rested softly on his shoulders. He looked back in the mirror, seeing the Kyuubi looking at him with an almost genuine smile on her face. She was not very tall, and even in his relative youth her mouth was level with his ear. She took advantage of this readily.

"I was serious before, Naruto-kun. I intend to watch you win this game." He felt her warm breath on his earlobe. His teenage body was beginning to respond. "I'm not your enemy, Naruto-kun." Her soft hands started slithering down his shoulders, flowing like silk over his clavicles and teasing their way lower down to his pectorals. Naruto was about to push her off when she disappeared completely.

The door creaked terribly and the room became smaller when one of the largest men Naruto had ever seen entered. Naruto was still observing him through the mirror, and thus caught the man throwing him a revolted look. Naruto finally turned.

"Are you the one I should thank for my rescue?" Naruto's voice felt tender to him, too soft. The man grunted, and gave the room a look-over.

"You didn't steal nothing, eh?" he asked, throwing Naruto an accusing glare. Naruto smiled.

"No." There was nothing to steal, unless one knew a fence who could sell stolen rotten lumber. "I thank you for your hospitality. May I ask where I am?" The man just stared at Naruto for a few seconds before he left the room in silence. Naruto arched an eyebrow at the retreating form but allowed the man his impoliteness. Naruto followed him into the living room.

"Your clothes are in the rack, outside," the man said, not turning his back. He sat in a crumbling chair that squeaked at his massive weight. "Don't come back. Don't need none of your kind in my house, just get your stuff and be out of here." He grumbled to himself and seemed to do nothing but stare at the wall of the other side of the room. The strange man's words upset Naruto, however.

"My kind?" The man glared at Naruto again, before staring back at his wall.

"Get out," the man said. Naruto shook his head. If the man meant what he thought – that Naruto had a Kekkei Genkai – then Naruto needed to know how he knew.

"What do you mean by my kind?" Naruto asked again, positioning himself next to the door. The man started looking furious, and before Naruto could get another word edgewise he was standing, the chair he was sitting on thrown back and shattered. He was frothing.

"Get out! Demon blood, youkai bastard! I never should have helped you! Get out!" Naruto dodged under a thrown butcher's cleaver and jumped forward. The man drew a skinning knife and slashed at Naruto's face, but he hit nothing but air. Naruto did not miss, and the man was wheezing on the ground in moments, his own skinning knife held against his throat.

"How did you know I have a Kekkei Genkai?" Naruto asked, cutting a bit to frighten the man. The thick skin gave some resistance but the knife which was meant to skin boars and bears easily drew blood. The man ignored the question and brought down his entire weight backwards on Naruto, trying to push him off. Instinctively, Naruto cut the man's throat the moment he felt he was going to trip. He fell backwards, and found himself lying on the ground with a corpse bleeding on top of him. He still didn't know how the man knew he had a bloodline limit either.

"That could have gone better," he muttered. He slid his waist to the left in a burst of movement, a move usually used when pinned to the ground by a _live_ enemy, and rolled the man off.

"My," the Kyuubi said, appearing next to the corpse. "To treat your gallant rescuer in such a way, has your mother taught you nothing, Naruto-kun?" Naruto stood up and looked down on his bare chest, which was stained with blood. He ignored the Kyuubi and left the house. Kyuubi's illusionary footsteps followed.

Hanging on a tree branch where the clothes he woke up in, dripping wet. Naruto moved past them into the forest, after the sound he recognized as a waterfall. He spotted Kyuubi's image fading in and out of view among the trees, startling him constantly, since he refused to become complacent in the foreign forest. He found the waterfall eventually, dropping into a large pool that narrowed into a river going a mountain. He must have escaped very high up, for him to still be up a mountain after a long swim downriver.

He removed the pants the dead man had given him and entered the water, letting the powerful flow of the stream wash away the blood. He closed his eyes for a second and rested his mind, trying to forget the guilt that had gripped him when he realized the man was dead. The revulsion when his blood dripped all over him, blood he had shed from the man who took him into his home. It was pointless to feel this way, he knew. It was natural reaction, a set of morals that he spent a long time trying to live by, and a longer time spitefully rejecting. Now, it was a part of himself that he did not like, hate even, that he hoped would fade away. He opened his eyes and swam back to the shore. Kyuubi was sitting by it, dipping naked toes in the chill water, wearing a red summer dress.

"Can you sense it? The water?" Naruto asked. The Kyuubi looked at him, seeming to ignore his nudity.

"In a way. My own chakra, what minuscule amount is flowing through your veins a moment before being filtered, easily resonates with the Nature Chakra that your body is absorbing like every other living thing. I can deduce the properties of your surroundings by examining the Nature Chakra's physical properties." She smiled that condescending smile when she finished the explanation. "Your mind is still too mired in mortal restraints to be capable of such feats, but as I said, perhaps one day you will be capable of approaching my worst accomplishments." Naruto ignored the expected insult and focused on what he thought could be a slip.

"Still too mired in mortal restraints? You think I could become immortal?" Naruto asked. The Kyuubi frowned at him.

"Are you really so foolish?" she asked. "You already are immortal, idiot." Naruto scowled at her.

"I can still be killed. I'm pretty sure I can still die of old age. I'm not truly immortal," he said. Kyuubi snarled at him, before regaining her composure. Her face became blank, utterly inhuman.

"If you do not understand, then you are not ready to know," she said, and disappeared. Naruto just looked at the spot where she sat and shook his head. He'll let the Kyuubi keep playing her mind games, because he knew she was going to be a harbinger of change in his fucked up life, something he dearly needed. He had to face the facts – he had been playing the game a long time, and he was doing something wrong if he wasn't getting any closer to winning it, or to at least understanding what was going on.

Giving the falling water one last look, Naruto just smiled at the peaceful scene before stepping back into the forest. It was getting chilly, and he needed to find a shirt.

* * *

The Zhanmadao cut through where his head was a moment before, and was cutting diagonally an instant later, intending on separating him through the stomach. Not intent on dying just yet, Naruto moved at the same direction as the blade but also closer to his opponent, closing in on the kenjutu user. His hand shot up in a blow to the liver, but the kid twisted in the last moment and avoided it. Naruto was forced to distance himself again when the blade completed its motion.

The long blade stabbed at him once more and Naruto deflected it with a kunai, leading it sideways and lowering it, overextending his opponent. He threw the kunai at the hand wielding the blade and rushed back in to close range. The kenjutsu user let go of his sword instinctively, the blade being heavy and not allowing him to move his hand in time. Mid kick Naruto mentally scoffed, his opponent was a very poor swordsman. His kick hit the boy fully on the face this time, dropping him. Naruto drew the kunai he threw from the ground and tossed it with a flick of the wrist, burying it in the prone young shinobi's eye socket, just underneath his Kiri headband.

The entire fight was over in less than ten seconds. Naruto wondered how his now dead mugger would have reacted if he knew that except the single kunai, Naruto had nothing on him except his clothes. His thinking was cut short by loud clapping from behind him. He turned carefully, knowing that whatever man managed to sneak up on him could also likely kill him.

The man was tall, even when compared with the tall people of Water Country. His eyes were sunken, and a jagged scar crossed them, forming a thin line of raw red skin when he blinked. A Zanbato was strapped to his back, colored black.

"You can handle yourself quite well, eh kid?" The man said. His voice was surprisingly soft, though it lacked any emotion associated with softness. Naruto relaxed his stance a bit to avoid aggression.

"He was trash," Naruto said. The ninja, for even though he wore no headband he was surely a ninja, chuckled.

"Damn right, but a bit better than the usual trash. You just killed my target," the man said.

"I see," Naruto said, stalling. "Is that a problem?" The man smirked and Naruto tensed,

"No, not for me at least," he said, and disappeared in a blur of speed when two more ninja entered the scene. Naruto took a step back, trying to keep his back clear. The two Mist shinobi, also around his age, rushed towards the body. One of them, a kunoichi with blue hair, sent the corpse an anguished look before focusing on Naruto. She looked furious. The other genin, green haired and with a youthful face, just stared transfixed at the punctured face, before his eyes caught Naruto's, terrified.

"Why did you kill him?" the girl asked. She was barely holding herself from jumping at him.

"He tried mugging me," Naruto said, deciding not to lie. If they were the level of their dead friend, he could take them, and if not, they wouldn't buy a lie anyway. The girl didn't seem to care for his answer anyway.

"Hiroi," she said, "we're going to kill him." Her teammate shot her a shocked look before nodding. Naruto looked at the kunai he threw at the boy from before and regretted that he didn't keep it on him.

The girl drew a pair of elongated kunai from her belt, suited for close range combat, while the boy, Hiroi apparently, drew a Wakizashi. Naruto widened the distance between his feet and slouched, entering his Taijutsu stance. He centered his weight within himself, folded his strength into his body, becoming a focus of power. He never got full instruction in the style that took decades to learn, and the game hampered his ability with the reliance on skill and attributes. Despite all of that, the style had won him more Taijutsu fights he should not have won than he cared to number.

The girl sprinted at him with cold fury hissing in her eyes and Naruto lost sight of her teammate, who ran to the right. Deciding not to let them outmaneuver him too easily, Naruto met the girl's charge with his own. He bent under a swipe and deflected a stab from the offhand to his stomach, entering a disturbing hug with his opponent. He ended the embrace with a knee to her stomach, purposefully aiming at a larger target. If he aimed to a less obvious organ, the game might cause him to miss. He intended to continue by grabbing her arm and breaking it in half, but was forced to jump back from a decapitating stroke by a wakizashi. He ducked and weaved between furious swipes but he knew he would eventually be hit, so he waited for another strike at his neck and released all the tension in his body. Gravity took him down faster than he ever could manually, and he softened the fall by slapping two hands on the ground. Before his opponent realized what happened, Naruto kicked him between the legs. He rolled to the side to avoid a kunai that lodged in the earth where he laid, and jumped to his legs in time to have an elongated kunai stabbed into his shoulder. He ignored the pain, adrenaline still flooding his bloodstream, and caught the offending arm. His offhand hit the girl in the windpipe and he winced in pain when it went through her, nearly dislocating his shoulder as the girl dissolved into water. It was dangerous to miss attacks with high momentum.

A quick survey of the battlefield revealed the true kunoichi standing guard next to her whimpering teammate on the ground. She was looking at him wearily.

"You won't have a chance once our jounin-sensei gets here," the girl said, and Naruto realized that despite her words being a basic intimidation tactic she was right. He needed to either kill them off quick or make a break for it. He did not for a second forget the Zanbato wielder who could still be in the area.

Desperate for a way to finish them off, a flash of insight hit him. He could use the jutsu his father taught him before… Ah. He grinned and tried to depress the strange dissonance in his mind created by the memories of his avatar. He hated knowing jutsu before starting the session almost as much as he loved them. He was just glad this little flash of insight didn't happen in the thick of battle.

His hands blurred in a series of handseals before he finished them with a fake shout of "Kai!". He did not disrupt any genjutsu. He had, in fact, created one.

"You meant that jounin-sensei?" he asked, pointing at the spot where the girl was now seeing a mutilated corpse of her own mind's creation. Seeing her horrified shock, Naruto was already running towards her, his hand low and ready for an upper stroke. The defeated girl's reaction was weak and unsure, and Naruto fell upon her like a tsunami, crushing her guard and her face immediately afterwards. He finished off her teammate with her own kunai, and kept the pair to himself. A blaze of warmth washed through him, welcomed in the chill mists of Water Country.

For now, he needed to get away before the genin team's real instructor caught up to him and tore him to pieces. He would have done so, if the man from before wasn't once more standing in his path. He was grinning at him.

"Good work kid," the man said, fixating on Naruto's shoulder injury that had already begun healing. "Where'd you learn to fight like that?" Naruto peered at him.

"Either you're their jounin-sensei, meaning I have no reason to tell you before you kill me, or I don't have the time to tell you my life story before he gets here. Are we going to fight, or can I leave?" Naruto's thumbs brushed over the twin kunai. He was acting more aggressive than usual, but he was still excited by the last fight and he knew the man before him had already decided what he wanted to do with him, and words would not change it much.

"You shouldn't worry about their sensei," the man said, and Naruto understood. In fact, he understood so well he guessed the man's next words. "But half this town saw your fight and Mist knows how to hold a grudge. I can offer you some protection kid, and training."

Naruto almost smirked, even as Kyuubi tittered in his mind.

**_A coincidence for certain_**, she said.

"And in exchange?" Naruto asked. The man smirked.

"Kill what we tell you to kill," he said. Naruto feigned hesitation.

"Fine," Naruto said, smiling. "I'm in." The man nodded and turned his back, expecting Naruto to follow. It was an obvious play at dominance, showing he didn't fear showing his back to Naruto, but Naruto accepted it. He was weaker now, yes, but not for long. As they walked deeper into the mists, the man spoke again.

"Welcome to the rebellion, kid, try not to die."

**A/N**

**What lies in store for our badly characterized hero? Does the Kyuubi know what she's talking about, or is she just pushing the Meciel ripoff too far? All possible questions will be answered by a random, innocuous sentence somewhere in the next chapter. **

**I think this chapter sucked, but then all of them sucked so relatively it's just fine.**

**I'm not really into making excuses but – this isn't a Sharingan Naruto story, there are plenty of those to go around. This is a video game one in which I'm trying to avoid all the common pitfalls. Mixing shit up by killing Naruto, and not having him chose the same avatar, was my way of avoiding the same mistakes always made in these fics. Also, I can only write so much angst and the Sharingan is fueled by emo-mojo. **


	6. Neat Swords and Glowy Eyes

_Nine tails flayed at the earth, ripping it asunder with great relish as the giant fox grinned with excitement. Scorch marks hissed and smoked where they hit, tainted with foul chakra that would forever mar the landscape, leaving it infertile and desolate for the rest of its short existence. Sitting on its haunches, the fox roared at the heavens, dispersing the clouds and turning the sky a wrathful red as its chakra grew to encompass the entire area. _

_"Are you having fun, Hime?" The silence that came after the question was deafening. The Kyuubi lowered its head to the ground, its legs splayed out at its sides. Its slit red eyes bore down on the intruder, at least ten times the size of the small man who stood with no visible fear before it. Enraged by the display of insolence, the fox leveled the full brunt of its killer intent on the man, enough to stop the hearts of a hundred ninja. The man fell to his kness, eyes wide in shock. He shimmered then, seeming to lose connection with reality, and when the shimmering ended he was once more staring down the massive form of Kyuubi with a half smirk. "This world has some neat tricks."_

_"And you have nothing _but_ neat tricks, Suphios," the fox growled, sanity casting out the maddened zeal that was in its eyes._

_"This humble trickster is at your service, Hime," the man said, effecting humility._

_"You serve no one but your mistress, the sole reason you still exist despite your insufferable arrogance and insolence," the fox said. Seeing the man opening his mouth to speak, it cut it off. "Tell me why you invaded my domain, Suphios, and I might consider letting you out."_

_"I come with bad tidings for you, Hime. Whatever balance you've managed to construct these last few millenniums has been irrevocably… disrupted." The fox's eyes narrowed at the man's words._

_"Speak, enough with your embellishments." The man's smirk returned, marring the otherwise beautiful face. He brushed off imaginary specks of dust from his black suit, ignoring the seething nine tailed demon he was stalling. The smirk fell of his face abruptly, and he winced as one of his fingers seemed to disappear entirely. "You overstep yourself, Suphios. You may share with me your place in the celestial flight, but your understanding is naïve and childish still." The man's eyes darkened with rage, ancient fury roaring in his eyes. _

_"I may not be your match yet, Hime, but soon even mortals will stand above you in the flight of heaven. It is most fitting, that the most arrogant of us all will be condemned to such a fate."_

_"Is this the sum of your message? An implied threat and some posturing? Leave, before even Andreae's response would not stop me from erasing you from existence." The man's form shimmered again, before he dissipated into a heavy mist in the vague shape of a human. When he spoke, his voice reverberated through the wastelands._

_"I tire of games. Andreae sent me to deliver you this message – when your power is stripped from you, when you are stripped of your immortality, know that it was me who gave you this punishment." The mist dispersed, leaving no physical trace of the man._

_"Impossible! It's not in her power to do so," the Kyuubi roared, knowing the man was still present. A malevolent chuckle emanated from no place in particular, closing in on the enraged Kyuubi._

_"Perhaps not, but it is well within the might of the Shinigami." The presence disappeared entirely, leaving the Kyuubi in silence and with the sudden and unfamiliar feeling of fear._

* * *

"You were never a shinobi of Kiri," the soft, feminine voice said, hot breath playing at the hairs on his neck. Naruto smiled blandly at her reflection in the tall window overlooking Kirigakure's beautiful night. When she returned the smile, it was affectionate, if not a touch exasperated. She put her hands around his waist and held tightly, nestling her head in the crook of his neck. "But you were always _my _shinobi, Naruto."

"I'm not sure what I have to gain by staying in the village, Mei." His voice had changed, no longer as soft as it was when he first spoke with Kyuubi outside of the seal, lying on a rotting bed in a doomed huntsman's shambling house. At sixteen years of age, neither Kyuubi nor Mei held the height advantage over the Kurama shinobi. "You're right, I was never a Kiri shinobi, and I never promised you my loyalty past the Blood Wars."

Mei looked up at the view of Kirigakure, her eyes fogging over with recollection. She visibly snapped herself out of her thoughts and smirked at his face looking back at her in the glass pane.

"There are benefits to being associated with a hidden village, Naruto."

"I don't need Kiri's protection," he said, and then flinched at the arrogance he heard in his voice. He was getting too complacent in the months following the rebellion's final victory over Yagura's loyalists. Mei just shook her head at him, her red hair spilling over his shoulder and exposing both her emerald-green eyes to him. He always thought that she looked better when her ridiculous haircut was disturbed.

"It's more than that. Ninja need a home to come back to when they're tired, and returning to a warm bed where there are people waiting for you is so much better than living in a camp or a random motel." Naruto held her hands that she clasped above his waist and untangled them, moving across her to the center of the Mizukage's office, sitting on the edge of the bare table. Mei frowned at him as she walked over to a large couch in the corner of the room that she fell into in a heap. Her blue dress wrinkled and she tenderly straightened it, her hands following her deep curves. Naruto closed his eyes in exasperation and felt glad he didn't gulp.

"Saying that I can only build a home in Kiri is a bit presumptuous, Mei." The Kage shrugged.

"You'll inevitably get attached to people, even if only a bit. Why not make sure those people will be either ninja or living behind the village's walls? That's the reason we have this whole ninja village system in the whole place." Mei shuffled on sofa, trying to find a comfortable position. She settled down eventually for lying on her side with her hand supporting her head. She looked incredibly seductive, and the sudden appearance of raven haired beauty on the couch's hand rest did not help matters. Kyuubi grabbed a handful of Mei's red locks and began to play with them in her hands.

"You should stay here, Naruto-kun," the Kyuubi said. Kirigakure's lights danced in her forest green eyes, which were set in the unnaturally beautiful face she had once told him she spent most of her life wearing. "Becoming a Kage could prove fruitful." Naruto seemed to ignore the Kyuubi as he watched Mei. He had become competent at pretending he couldn't notice the player's random appearances.

"You know me better than that, Mei," he said, and frowned at her smirk.

"I do. I know that you like to think that you're some perfect emotionless ninja who can pretend to be human when he needs to."

"And you think otherwise?" Naruto asked. The Kyuubi was stopped playing with red locks and watched the woman next to her with interest. There was a smile tugging at the edge of her lips.

"I _know_ that you're just good at pretending to yourself that it's all an act." She rose abruptly, and approached him, leaving the Kyuubi to lounge back on the sofa. Mei stepped between Naruto's spread legs, placing her hands on his hips. He could feel her breath on his face, and her eyes piercing his. "Can you really tell me you don't feel anything when we do this?" She said, and leaned down to give him a scorching kiss. It was passionate in the extreme, and Naruto obliged her and let her toungue dance into his mouth, playing at exploring it and playing with his own. When they separated, her face was red with excitement and her green eyes seemed to darken with lust.

"You're an amazing woman, Mei," Naruto said, "but your kisses would need to get much better before they could cure me of my pretend sociopathy and dislike of authority." The Kyuubi tittered in the background.

"We can always try the more advanced techniques," Mei tempted, her voice laced with emotion. She was breathing more than she was speaking.

"Are you still trying to get me to join the village, or are you just trying to get me in bed?" Mei smiled, her hands moving up his hips. One rested on the bulge of his pants, caressing him, and the other crawled up under his shirt, her cold touch sending shivers down his spine.

"Jounin rank," she whispered, and laid another short kiss on his mouth. "Travel rights," she continued, laying a kiss on his jaw as she expertly ripped out a button from his pants. Naruto's breathing quickened. "Right of mission refusal." She ripped off his shirt, throwing it above her shoulder. Her hands caressed his chest and started to move down. Naruto reached out and untied the string holding her dress. He brushed it off her shoulders, letting it fall to the ground. "High command," she moaned into him as she climbed over the table. Naruto shut her up by smashing his lips into hers. He grabbed her and spun in place, placing her beneath him on the table.

"When you're done taking advantage of the innocent Kage," Kyuubi said dryly from her forgotten seat on the couch, "do consider the game implication of joining the village."

Naruto did not know if she had anything more to say as he disrupted the illusion, but he swore he could still hear Kyuubi's mocking laughter as he looked into Mei's sparkling eyes.

* * *

The standard Kiri Jounin vest was annoyingly comfortable and well made, Naruto thought as he donned it for the first time. He hesitated for a moment before tying the head protector around his bicep. He tried flexing it, and untied it when he saw that it debilitated movement, and made one arm slightly heavier than the other. Sighing, he tied it around his throat like a choker. He excused to himself that it would protect his throat and help with chill Kiri winds.

Mei had set up the apartment he was staying in, in a district that was no damaged by the attack on the city. The apartment was large and overly spacious, an extravagance that he had no use for, but he had no intention of getting a smaller one. If he was going to tie himself down to a village, he might as well milk it for all it had.

The game had already recognized the house as his official home, so Naruto could summon his gear to his hands from the inventory without having to talk all the way to the closet on the other side of the room. Kunai and sealing notes appeared in his pockets and on his belt, and a sheathed sword materialized in his hand, which he strapped to his waist. The blade was simple, a katana he got from a slain enemy, and he intended to find a better sword to complement his growing skills eventually.

"I don't understand you," he said, speaking to the empty apartment. He waited for the familiar feeling of Yang chakra seeping into his mind, and the Kyuubi appeared, sitting on the rough stone of his windowsill, moonlight giving her skin an ethereal glow.

"I usually don't intend you to," she said. He ignored her snipe.

"You know that I won't kill her. You watched me develop attachments and feel loss when friends died in the war. You know that staying in the village will only result in more attachments, more weakness." He spun to face her, fury in his eyes. "You told me that if I want to win this game I need to let go of everything! That I need to become a player and nothing more. Why the hell are you just sitting around smirking to yourself, where's the fire and brimstone, the dramatic thunder and the anger?"

Kyuubi smiled. The smile was tender and affectionate, with a touch of exasperation. With her green eyes glinting in moonlight, she looked so much like Mei, so _human_, that he felt his anger wash away like the tide on Kiri's shores.

"You remember the last words I told you that day well, even if you didn't understand them completely," she said. "But do you remember the first thing I told you when you entered the seal?"

Naruto froze as he tried to remember, desperately conjuring up three-year old memories that he could barely remember as they happened. He spoke as he remembered, repeating her words from when she first met him, standing next to the false fruit tree.

"It may be false, but does that make it any less beautiful?"

"These may be temporary creations, but if the only company you're willing to keep is immortal, you'll find you have a very poor selection. If the one forming these attachments is Uzumaki Naruto, I couldn't care less. It was only your cowardly rejection of yourself that forced my hand."

"You couldn't have told me this before?" She laughed, breaking the temporary comfort of her tenderness.

"That would be entirely counterproductive," she hinted. Naruto broke his stare and looked over her shoulder at the village, and the dark patch of sea in the distance. He nodded, and jumped out the window, through her image and past several houses before landing in silence on a rooftop, leaping again to the next. He cut a quick pace over the rooftop highway of the village, making sure to avoid those wrecked houses that looked as if their roofs would collapse at any added strain. Several ANBU on patrol noticed him, but none stopped him when they noticed the distinct yellow hair that marked him as one of the most recognized figures of the Blood Wars. He sped past the gate guards, shrouded by an unnatural darkness that hid him from their eyes, and sped off across the crop fields of the Hidden Mist.

He was going to get himself a sword, and maybe close a loose end in the bargain.

* * *

It was a wild guess that led him to the Land of Waves. When he spotted the completed bridge in the distance, it only confirmed it. Indulging his curiosity, he took the scenic route and walked over the bridge, but not before reading the inscription in the arching gateway.

_The Konohamaru Memorial Bridge_, it read, and Naruto felt a pang of guilt that he easily dismissed. It was unfortunate that his choice in the starting village resulted led to Konohamaru's death, but then he never knew this Konohamaru anyway.

The town looked decently well off. It looked awfully like the villages of Water Country did these days. Recovering, but with all too visible scars. The people had hard faces and the children had smiles that didn't always reach their eyes.

Deciding he had seen enough, he set a quick pace towards his intended destination, running up a cliff face and jumping through a short length of forest. His memory of the place was foggy at best, but he found it eventually, a grave in the center of a clearing, marked only by a hunter nin's mask and the massive Head Cleaving Sword. It was an imposing thing, having left an impression on him in several lifetimes of having seen it when much shorter than he was now. Approaching it, he saw that it was now only a bit shorter than him, its handle reaching out to his chin while the blade was stabbed into the ground.

He held the handle and was about to tear it out of the ground when a voice spoke up from behind him. The two ninja observing him from the treetops had finally decided to speak.

"You shouldn't go around stealing other people's swords," it said, in a voice that played at the edges of Naruto's memory. Turning around to face them, hand still on the handle of the blade, Naruto smiled insipidly at seeing the face of one of the few people he truly despised, even when he knew they were mere antagonists designed to challenge him.

"Uchiha Sasuke, Hozuki Suigetsu," Naruto said, acknowledging the pair. He tore the blade out of the ground, encountering little resistance. It was still sharp. He rested it on his shoulder as Zabuza once did, and adjusted his legs to support the extra weight. The sword was damn heavy, and he did not have a lot invested in Strength.

"And you are?" Sasuke asked, feigning apathy. Naruto did not miss the sixteen year old's tensing muscles, and did not fail to sense the chakra coursing with intensity in his veins.

"What's it matter who he is? He's gonna be dead for touching Zabuza-senpai's sword." Naruto ignored Sasuke's question for the moment.

"Hozuki-san," he said, "While it was believed you betrayed the village during Yagura's reign, the new Mizukage recognizes that you were abducted by Orochimaru." Suigetsu's eyes widened and he seemed to notice Naruto's head protector and Jounin vest for the first time. "However, if you won't place yourself under my command and accompany me now to Kiri, I will be forced to designate you a missing-nin." Naruto smiled again. "Make your choice."

Suigetsu stood in silence while Sasuke watched them both. He didn't seem overly concerned. Eventually, Suigetsu grinned, exposing sharp fangs.

"Thing is, I've got some things I need to get done before I can come back," he said. He gave Kubikiri a glance. "And I don't think you'll give me that sword if I come with." Naruto shook his head.

"No, I won't. If that's your decision." And then Naruto jumped at them, Kubikiri screaming murder before him in a wide sweeping arch. Suigetsu couldn't dodge easily and mock Naruto's technique because he dissolved to water as soon as a sharp katana burst through his chest. Sasuke, who had noticed the illusion, jumped aside in time for a katana to miss him, and with a flare of his Sharingan disrupted the illusion of the sword swinging Naruto, and exposed two who were already charging at him, swords in hand. He deftly weaved between their joint assaults, his Sharingan giving him the marked advantage. Taking the offensive, he drew his Kusanagi and deflected one blow, sending it into the path of the other's, and with a deft spin he passed through the gap between both his attackers and cut them both. The two clones dissolved into a faint mist, leaving Sasuke alone in the clearing with a now reformed Suigetsu.

"Shit, I suck at Genjutsu," the newly minted missing nin said. "And I don't even have a sword on me." Sasuke seemed to ignore him, before he threw three shuriken at an empty spot in the clearing. Manipulating thin wires tied to them with his fingers, he used them to intercept the movement of the chakra disturbance his eyes allowed him to see.

Naruto appeared on the ground, bleeding from gaping wounds where the shuriken had pierced his abdomen. One had hit his head, and lodged itself in his temple. He wheezed out a death rattle and stilled. Suigetsu chuckled.

"Guess he wasn't that good anyw-"

An explosion tore the clearing apart, obliterating the surrounding trees and toppling more beyond. In the center of the destruction, a puddle of water coalesced into the form of Hozuki Suigetsu for the second time in the battle.

"Nevermind," he muttered, and moved away for the sake of not staying in the same place.

Naruto, hidden under a very basic visual illusion, frowned at the sight of the reforming ninja. He had never fought the man before, only having heard of his powers via third party, and he couldn't remember a glaring weakness being mentioned. The explosion, which Naruto knew Suigetsu did not expect, still apparently didn't put a dent on him. Deciding to make a quick test, Naruto sent a pulse of chakra at the former Mist ninja, just as he jumped off the branch in time to avoid Sasuke's lightning enhanced Kusanagi.

A moment after his pulse hit Suigetsu he analyzed the returning force, the amount of reflected chakra being a variable in calculating Suigetsu's current relative chakra level. He couldn't tell how much chakra the man had, with chakra being a relatively mystic property reliant on physical and spiritual forces and focus, but he had other plans. His katana was drawn from its sheathe as he swept across the clearing towards Suigetsu, the blade held horizontally at his waist. Suigetsu disabled the visual illusion in time to dodge the strike, when another Naruto burst out of the first, faster by far, and vaulted over Suigetsu while cutting off his head. As expected, the man simply turned into water and reformed a few steps away.

Naruto ducked under a high sword swing by Sasuke and jumped back out of the way of a kick, then rolled to the side to avoid a ball of scorching fire. The Uchiha was already on him, and Naruto avoided blocking the charged sword with his own, dodging instead. Waiting for the right moment, he stabbed at Sasuke's chest. Sasuke's sword came to block, a smirk appearing on his face, when three arms came out of Naruto's chest, all holding swords stabbing at Sasuke's vitals. Sasuke had already devoted his tempo to blocking the strike, and he was forced to twist his sword diagonally to block two of the strikes. He managed to bring out a kunai to block the third. The fourth blade passed right through him, dealing no damage, and Sasuke let out an involuntary sigh when Naruto's form dissipated into the air.

Once more hidden behind at the edge of the extended clearing, Naruto smirked. He had learned what he wanted to – a second pulse revealed that turning into water cost Suigetsu chakra, but that staying dissolved did not. It was simple and obvious, but it would do. Naruto's smirk was wiped off his face when Suigetsu shot a bullet of water through it, turning his skull into much, but Suigetsu had little time to enjoy the spectacle before Naruto was on him and his "corpse" dissolved into mist. Suigetsu did well dodging Naruto's strikes, but he wasn't capable of distancing himself from Naruto so Sasuke could join the mêlée. Relentless, Naruto pushed Suigetsu to his limits in dodging when Naruto let go of the blade and hit him with a palm thrust to the face. Suigetsu's face turned to water which swallowed Naruto's hand and crushed it, but Naruto's hand faded into mist even as Naruto ran past Suigetsu and towards Sasuke, the only enemy remaining.

Enraged at Naruto turning his back to him, Suigetsu aimed another Water Gun at him when he saw a sword stab at him at the edge of his vision. A moment before it struck through him, he used his water transformation technique and let it pass through him, though it disappeared a moment later. Composed entirely of water, he suddenly felt an amazing fear creeping up his spine; he couldn't stay in water form. He'd surely die if he did. He reformed just in time to sense a sword coming at his spine, and instinctively turned into water.

Naruto's eyes glinted in the afternoon sun as he went after Sasuke, dodging his strikes expertly while striking back when he could. Not being able to riposte was troublesome, but Naruto had fought far more skilled swordsmen than Sasuke during the Blood Wars. Sasuke, being the recipient of several shallow cuts already, apparently understood this as he jumped back into jutsu range. Naruto allowed this since he preferred to limit his engagements with Sasuke to short bouts. Any less and he allowed the Sharingan to copy too much of his style and analyze too much of his methods.

The lance of lightning was new but Naruto had little trouble dodging it, except that a second bolt shot out of it and hit him in the chest, sending him bouncing off the ground until he hit a tree, sizzling and smelling of cooked meat. Sasuke was not fooled and he spun with a Chidori chirping madly in his hand, crashing it into Naruto. The Chidori burst through his chest and Naruto spat a globule of blood on Sasuke's Sharingan, which Sasuke didn't have time to dispel before Naruto kept slicing at him, ignoring the cavity in his chest. Incapable of blocking with his eyes obscured Sasuke shouted as a storm of fire and lightning erupted around him, dropping him in a newly formed crater in the ground. Naruto whistled as he stood at the top of the crater, looking down at the Uchiha glaring up at him.

"Real impressive Uchiha, is it called the Puke Elemental Chakra All Over the Place Technique? I wonder how long it took you to develop this mastery of elemental jutsu." Sasuke snorted.

"I was beginning to respect you, Kiri nin, but you talk too much for a ninja, just like my idiot teammate used to."

"Konohamaru, I'm guessing?" Sasuke's eyes sharpened and his glare intensified, as if offended Naruto said the boy's name. "Well, I wouldn't speak for Konohamaru, but we both know why you and I are speaking now." Sasuke's glare relaxed into a confident smirk as he burst into lilies, while Naruto faded away. A clash of swords pierced through the silence in a distant part of the clearing, revealing the two ninja in blade lock.

"You're good," Sasuke said. "But not good enough. You forgot something." And Naruto's face twisted in agony as electricity pumped through his body. Sasuke's smirk froze on his face when Naruto reached out and grabbed his arm, sending a burst of chakra to his brain. He disrupted Sasuke's control of the elemtnal chakra and Sasuke screamed as he felt the same pain he was inflicting on Naruto. Naruto held tight, refusing to let go even as his skin hissed and he felt as if his mind was melting under the assault. A faint tint of red covered his features as Sasuke's screams turned hoarse. He held on the sixteen year old Uchiha's arm as he watched the boy's face boil, his red and black eyes melt and blood seep out of every orifice.

"Itachi…" were the child's last words before Naruto knew for certain he was dead. He let go in a burst of red chakra and kicked off the smoking corpse in anger.

"Fuck!" he yelled, still feeling the pain while Kyuubi healed his injuries, taking her sweet time. He could barely stand and he smelled his wounds more than he could feel them, but he had enough in him to walk towards the Uchiha's remains. He kneeled, wincing as pretty much everything hurt, and picked up the Kusanagi, before rising again with effort. He stood next to the Uchiha, looking down with no emotion on his face. "You're pretty much the only one I still enjoy killing, Sasuke," he said, before chopping off his head in a perfect arch. Not having it in him to kneel again, he turned the head upside down and stuck the sword through the neck, sticking it through like a marshmallow.

"Kyuubi, help me get rid of the rest," he said, and watched as a tail of blood-red chakra wrapped itself around the Uchiha's body and melted it to nothing in minutes. He felt the eyes on the back of his neck before he felt the Genjutsu.

"Yeah, yeah, I know," he said, and started ambling towards where he left Suigetsu. He wondered what happened to the guy. Kyuubi stood by and smirked at him as he groaned his way towards his second opponent.

"It's really your fault," she blamed, ignoring him giving her the middle finger. "You are known for lacking patience, and you chose an avatar that focused on Genjutsu. It is inevitable that your fights would all end abruptly and with frustration, much like your sessions with dear Mei."

"That was a low blow, and uncalled for," he said. Naruto found Suigetsu drooling on the ground, his eyes out of focus as flinched every two seconds.

"Please…" he muttered, gasping out for breath.

"I took _this_ guy down using nothing but Genjutsu." Kyuubi clapped, but she did so in a way that left little room for interpretation.

"Truly impressive. Taking down this half trained boy when he was without his weapon of choice and when he specifically said he was susceptible to Genjutsu, is an accomplishment that would have bards and poets retelling for ages to come."

Naruto snarled at her as he stepped on Sasuke's head and scrapped it off his sword, before cutting off Suigetsu's head as well. He stuck the sword in Suigetsu head and pushed it up the sword, then added Sasuke's too. Kyuubi watched him with amusement, a smile on her lips.

"This is brutal even for you, Naruto-kun," she said. "You truly hate this mortal, don't you?" Naruto nodded as he frowned at the sight of the two heads stuck on Sasuke's old sword. He supposed he was being uncharacteristically vicious, but he was willing to bet this Sasuke deserved it.

"It was the Avenger Naruto session, I think," he said. "This one too." The chakra tail coiled around Suigetsu's body, and it did not dissolve into water, instead dissolving into molten flesh which soon after dissolved into nothing at all.

"Hatred is a powerful weapon, but it is wasted on mortals," Kyuubi said. Naruto frowned at her, before he started walking towards where he hid the Kubikiri.

"So it's okay to form attachments with 'mortals', but not to hate them? Sometimes I wonder if you're just making this shit up as you go, Kyuubi." She laughed, allowing some carefree honesty into it that it usually lacked.

"What makes you think I don't, Naruto-kun? This _is_ my first time playing mentor to an ascended," she said.

"Should I bother?" Naruto asked. She liked dropping words like _immortal_ and _ascended_ and then saying nothing about them. His avatar had high Intelligence, but meta-topics like Kyuubi's annoying hints were not covered and the original (or was he?) Naruto wasn't exactly a deductive genius.

"It would defeat the point," she said, as she had many times before, and Naruto just waved his hand in surrender and walked into the woods.

"Yeah, yeah, and in the meantime we'll stay stuck like this for the rest of time." Kyuubi did not follow him, choosing instead to observe him as he faded into the tree line, a familiar smirk on her face.

* * *

Hiashi Hyuuga had not run this fast since the day he spotted a man carrying his daughter out of the Hyuuga compound. His Byakugan helped him run through the underbrush while looking at his feet, sparing him the slower method of traveling through the tree tops. He was running towards the only spot hidden from his eyes, a path of darkness in his perfect vision. He could recognize the obstruction as the seal known only to members of the Main House, and his heart pounded even faster as he considered the implications.

The darkness was nearing, and in an ironic twist of fate he had to turn off his Byakugan so he could see what he was facing. He jumped through the foliage into the clearing, landing in a defensive stance of the Gentle Fist, and lost all his composure when saw the horror before him.

His eldest daughter, beautiful Hinata that so resembled her mother, lay on the ground with gaping holes for eyes, bloody tears streaking down her face. Lying next to her was a medic-nin he recognized from the hospital, every orifice in his face leaking blood in injuries Hiashi knew came from a Gentle Fist strike to the brain.

Standing before them was his youngest, dressed in white and covered with blood, gold rings for pupils in her eyes and a smirk on her face.

"Hello, father," she said, and he knew she was lost to him in every way.

"Hanabi," he barely got out. "Did you…" he could not finish the question as surely as he knew the answer. The girl's smirk widened. She tossed a lock of brown hair over her shoulder.

"I killed the stuttering bitch and took her eyes," she said. Hiashi felt the bile rise up in his throat.

"Why? What madness drove you to this?" He felt completely lost, everything he had had been stripped away from him. He had heard seen the note calling Hinata to the forest and ran after her in concern, but he never expected…

"Hinata is growing into a fine kunoichi. Those were the words you said to your father two months ago, the words that I knew sealed my fate. Did you think I would kowtow to your, father, as you branded me like cattle and brought me to heel?"

"Did you expect I would make you my heir after what you have done?" Hanabi laughed.

"No, father, I expect you to die."

"You could have escaped," he said, disturbed that he found it in himself to be truly furious at his daughter. Hateful. "You could have appealed to the Hokage. You didn't have to commit this… this kin slaughter." His eyes steeled as he found inner resolve. "I'm sorry Hanabi, but you forced my hand. I will take you to the Hokage, and you will face the consequences of your actions." He would not let her be executed, but the matter of the seal was no longer a question. He would keep her hidden in the compound for the rest of her life, if he had to.

Hanabi smiled at him, malice sipping out of her features. "Did you think I took her eyes simply because I'm mad, father?" The golden rings that formed her pupils began to glow. Hiashi decided that he would not allow her to reveal whatever power she had gained. Two stance changes brought him to striking distance, his palm going up in a debilitating stroke that would render her incapable of breathing. His palm met her chest, but the touch was tender and she merely caressed his palm for a moment before he jumped back, almost crying in anguish. His left arm was an inflamed, dark red mess, seeping mucus and showing bone through flesh.

"This is the power within reach of a Hyuuga that knows true desperation, the original reason for the Binding Seal. Know your place, father. See through the eyes of Virūpākṣa."

The glow grew to encompass the whole of his vision and then he knew no more. He fell to his knees, drooling over himself and looking forward blankly, little left of his mind beyond the flesh.

"Goodbye father," she said, even though he could no longer understand, "and thank you for the opportunity."

Her palm met his face and Hyuuga Hiashi lost what little life he had left.


End file.
